AL-QAEDA is secretly investing in blue-chip Australian stocks and using the profits to help finance terrorism. British intelligence agencies have established the terror group is also targeting top technology and defence corporations in Australia, Singapore and other Pacific Rim countries. They say al-Qaeda is laundering billions of dollars it earns through drug-running, with the help of China's Secret Intelligence Service.
| That's interesting. It'd show a distinct short-sightedness on the part of the Chinese, which surprises me... |
US Treasury agents, working closely with European intelligence services, believe more than $A1 billion has been invested in stocks by al-Qaeda since the start of the year. The money has been laundered through unsuspecting banks as far apart as Australia, Japan, Germany and Ireland. British intelligence agency MI6 has also established that al-Qaeda's partner in the drug running was the China SIS. Brian McAdam, a former Canadian diplomat who is the leading expert on Chinese spying, said : "Only now are Western intelligence agencies becoming aware of the links that CSIS has with drugs, money laundering and the support it provides for terrorists. We are talking of billions of dollars." With Mr McAdam's help, the FBI has identified 3000 companies in the US - "some of whom are major players on Wall Street" - who are not only controlled by CSIS, but are linked to al-Qaeda through its investments. It is working with the highest-ranking Chinese defector to the US, Xu Junping, who for five years oversaw all secret CSIS operations against the West. Mr Xu has described Beijing meetings with Osama bin Laden in 2000, during which the investment plan was discussed. Al-Qaeda has used ultra-sophisticated money laundering techniques. At its centre is the software program Promis, developed by a Washington company for US intelligence. A copy of the software was sold to the Russians by Richard Hanssen, an FBI computer specialist who was a long-time KGB spy. He confessed that the Russians sold it to bin Laden four years ago for $A3 million. |