Reza Alghurabi

Money laundry is an ordinary operational technique among criminal gangs and terrorist organizations to provide their own finances. However, this does not mean that governments do not commit it. In countries where mafia gangs are widely involved in money laundering, this criminal act can infiltrate financial institutions, acquire control of large sectors of the economy through investment, or offer bribes to public officials and indeed governments.

Edi Rama PM of Albania

The countries involved in money laundering are strongly pressured by international law and international organizations and are subject to sanction regimes.

On February 21th, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that it has added Albania and five other countries to the countries under “increased monitoring”, otherwise known as the “grey list”. This list includes countries whose jurisdictions have “strategic deficiencies” in the prevention of money laundering and organized crime and are therefore subject to greater monitoring.

Albania entered the list, while it was dropped out of it in 2015, but, it was re-entered the list by the MONEYVAL, which is a permanent mechanism of the European Council in charge of evaluating the implementation of standards in the fight against money laundering and organized crime.

As early as 2018 Moneyval had called on the Albanian authorities to step up efforts to prosecute people involved in money laundering and confiscation of their property.

The report, which has been very negative for Albania, highlights the link between corruption and criminal organizations related to money laundering, warning the authorities that adequate measures have not been taken to combat the phenomenon.

MONEYVAL recognizes that the Albanian authorities are well aware of the risks that money laundering causes to the formal economy and have created national coordination mechanisms for policy development to address the risks. However, these mechanisms have not proven to be fully effective and there are some areas where better results could have been obtained.

Albania’s lack of action to combat money laundering is also recognized by the US government. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2019 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report on Money Laundering and Financial Crimes, the Government of Albania made no significant progress toward thwarting money laundering and financial crimes in 2018. It is insisted in the report that Albania remains vulnerable to money laundering due to corruption, growing organized crime networks, and weak legal and government institutions.

This situation has prompted the European Commission to expand the mechanism of control of the phenomenon of money laundering in Albania, placing the country on the gray list of countries at high risk of money laundering, from which it had left in 2015.

However, there is something worrying about Albania’s inclusion in the gray list, which discriminates it from other listed countries: The country is home for a terrorist organization with a long history of illicit fundraising activities.

The Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) Organization, is an Iranian guerilla group listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada until a few years ago. This terrorist group, which was relocated with more than 2,500 members to Albania in 2016, is among criminal organizations that has a long history of money laundering activities.

According to evidence which became available after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the MEK received millions of dollars in Oil-for-Food program subsidies from Saddam Hussein from 1999 through 2003. In addition to discovering 13 lists of recipients of such vouchers on which the MEK appeared, evidence linking the MEK to the former Iraqi regime includes lists, as well as video footage of both Saddam Hussein handing over suitcases of money to known MEK leaders.

In addition, there are numerous reports exposing the MeK’s approach in fraudulently soliciting funds for imaginary orphanages and charities and then using the funds to purchase weapons and telecommunication equipment. Among these reports, one could refer to the German Federal Security Service’s report in 2008 and the Rand Corporation’s monograph in 2009.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of constitution (BFV) published a 23-page report in 2008, referring to the MEK as a terrorist organization which is actively involved in illicit fundraising activities. It is mentioned in the report that the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political arm of MEK, active in Europe and North America, has drawn the attention of the world due to its substantial propaganda and systematic fund-raising activities.

The RAND Corporation, a U.S. government-funded think tank, issued an analysis of the MeK in 2009, referring to its extensive fundraising activities. The report mentioned criminal investigations conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany about the MeK in 2001, which exposed ongoing money-laundering activities by the group, leading to the arrestment and prosecution of several of its members.

The MEK has repeatedly been questioned by the media about their financial resources, but they have never responded. This strengthens the speculations about the group’s current extensive money laundering activities.

Worryingly, it is more than five years since this terrorist-criminal group with a long record of money laundering resides in Albania, a country on the FTAF’s gray list for money laundering, and have warm relations with the country’s officials.

How Could Albania's Hosting of the MEK Affect Its Inclusion in the FATF’s Grey List?

This will probably make the situation a little more complicated in Albania and even in the Balkans, leading to further promotion of terrorism and money laundering and weakening of international mechanisms to combat money laundering in the Balkans. The fact that the Balkans have been a haven for organized crime networks and one source of human resources for extremist groups such as ISIS makes matters worse.

Albania has been longing for joining the European Union for years, but the process of starting negotiations to join Tirana has failed so far due to various reasons, including corruption and money laundering. Although Albania took some measures during this period, according to the FATF’s announcement, it was mainly legal adjustments and”not actions on the ground.”

Limiting criminal groups, including the MEK, and clarifying their financial mechanisms and resources can greatly contribute to transparency, which could bring Albania into the practical phase of combating money laundering. Otherwise, it seems unlikely that Tirana’s actions will satisfy the MONEYVAL experts to remove them from the grey list of money laundering and terror financing.
March 10 ,2020
BY Reza Alghurabi, ahtribune.com

Early on December 31, Iranian news sources, as well as some anti-Iran groups, reported an explosion in front of the building of a construction institute affiliated with the IRGC.

A few hours later, a spokesperson for the Mujahedin-e Khalq organization (MEK, a.k.a MKO, NCRI, PMOI, etc.) claimed responsibility for the attack in an announcement. Some Iranian sources released footage of the building showing it was intact and denied the bombing. Some others, quoting informed sources, described the incident as merely a biker throwing a lit firecracker near the building.

Regardless of whether or not the attack has occurred or how much damage it has caused, MEK claiming responsibility for the attack indicates the group’s plans and intentions to return to its violent phase.
MEK’s announcement reminds political observers and Iran analysts of the group’s bloody operations in the country and its brutal squad of assassins in different parts of Iran during the 1980s. Operations in which according to a 1994 US state department report on the MEK, thousands of civilians were murdered and various political, economic and military centers were damaged.
The MEK has adopted a violent approach against its opponents since it was established in 1965. The group’s harsh, violent and terrorist attitude, has been recruited in the face of domestic critics, the Shah’s government, and then the Islamic Republic of Iran. MEK’s military treatment of Iraqi ethnic minorities, especially Turkmen and Kurds, when the group was located in Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein, was also part of a brutal approach taken by the group’s leaders from the outset. This procedure continued until 2003.
Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK which was listed by the US as a terrorist group, was forcibly disarmed by the US Army and the group’s military wing was forced to hand over its heavy and semi-heavy weapons to the US forces in Iraq.
The MEK has since tried to adapt its tactics to the new situation. So in order to get out of the terrorist lists in the UK, EU and US, a new approach was taken that was more like a tactical change than a strategical one; entering a phase of political and propaganda activities against Iran to persuade the West that the MEK is the only alternative to the Islamic Republic.
In the 16 years since the forced disarmament, the MEK has established extensive contacts with former Western political figures and launched massive propaganda efforts against Tehran. But none of these activities of the MEK could bring them their desired outcome, which is the acceptance of the group as an alternative to the Islamic Republic and the overthrow of the Iranian political system.
Therefore, in recent years, the MEK has sought to direct its regime-change activities within Iran by organizing its forces who are titled by the group as ‘insurgent cells’. In the past few years, the actions of these cells have been limited to installing images of the group’s leaders and burning pictures of Iranian high-ranking officials in low-lying, low-traffic areas. The MEK has not made any successful gains from the formation of these cells so far.
Although the December 31 operation caused neither casualties nor damage, it was a significant act in several respects.

The first issue is the use of a bomb in the operation and claiming responsibility for the blast by a MEK spokesperson in the group’s official media, a phenomenon that has been unprecedented in recent years since the MEK’s tactical shift and entering into the phase of political propaganda.

In a video released hours after the explosion on MEK’s website, the group claimed responsibility for the attack and attributed it to its own military branch, the National Liberation Army (NLA). The NLA was the MEK’s military wing in the Iraq-Iran war, which served alongside Saddam Hussein’s army and conducted cross-border raids into Iran during the last stages of the war. In addition to border attacks on Iran, the NLA served Saddam in the brutal repression of Iraqi Kurds during 1991.
Therefore, citing this infamous military branch and attributing the attack to it, means a shift in the MEK’s tactics and its re-entering to the armed and terrorist phase.
Another important point is the MEK spokesperson’s sharp statement, in which he spoke of the need to demolish the centers affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. This threat resembles two deadly terrorist operations by the group in the offices of the Islamic Republic Party and Prime Minister in 1981.
This is probably why the spokesperson, for the first time since the group’s disarmament in 2003, has called upon (the US) for the return of their weapons.

It seems unlikely that the MEK’s spokesperson be unaware of the political and legal burden of these threats. It is clear that the MEK is seriously seeking to change its strategy and return to the phase of violent and terrorist acts.

This action, as it was said, stems from the MEK’s foundation which is based on achieving results through violent acts. It also demonstrates that the group’s decade-long political and propaganda activities to persuade Western governments to overthrow Iran’s political system have so far failed. So the MEK’s return to phase of terrorist acts could be its response to this failure.

It appears that continuation of this approach by the MEK, will put Western sponsors of the group in an unfavorable position and it will cause further damage to Iran’s relations with them. The MEK is turning from a refugee group in Albania to a group that, in addition to carrying out anti-Iranian actions, is now on its way into armed phase, an approach which could lead to Tirana’s direct confrontation with Tehran.
Tehran’s recent confrontations with Western powers such as Washington and London in the Persian Gulf in the battle of tankers and UAVs demonstrate that Iranians, who now benefit military balance in the West Asian region, do not easily overlook their security threats. Whether this threat is posed by the MEK through terrorist operations, similar to what they did during the 1980s and saw its consequences, or by its Western sponsors through providing facilities for the terrorist group.

BY Reza Alghurabi – ahtribune.com

Reza Alghurabi is an Arab journalist who lives in Iran. He is a former researcher at the Beirut Center for Middle East Studies and an independent researcher and journalist writing in Iranian newspapers including the Khorasan daily.

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