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| Bank moves to resolve complaints of ethnic bias |
| 2006-04-13 |
| Bank of America Corp. will offer to reopen the accounts of three Arab-American customers that were closed in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism or money laundering, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday. The offer drew praise from local Arab and Muslim leaders, who have long complained about the unexplained bank-account closures. The step was part of an agreement that resolves complaints from four people who alleged they were discriminated against because of their ethnicity by Fleet Bank, later purchased by Bank of America. A spokeswoman for Reilly said an investigation of the bank's actions ''did not show a pattern of discrimination against customers of Arab or South Asian descent." Only 5 percent of all the accounts Fleet closed on suspicion of terrorism or money laundering in the Northeast were held by customers with Arab or South Asian names, she said. A Bank of America spokeswoman said that Fleet ''followed standard industry practices" at the time. The bank also agreed to pay $50,000 to Reilly's office to create consumer-education material aimed at the Arab-American and Muslim communities. Neither Reilly's office nor the bank would discuss the closed accounts in much detail. But Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the matter began when it first complained to Reilly's office about roughly 15 accounts the bank closed without explanation in 2002 and 2003. She said several of those accounts were held by employees of Ptech Inc., a Quincy software firm whose offices were searched by federal authorities as part of a broader terror-financing investigation. They believed that was the likely reason for the accounts being closed, though none of them were ever charged with wrongdoing. Of the account holders, four were willing to reveal complete financial details about themselves to Reilly's investigators, she said. Of those four, the bank was willing to offer to reopen the accounts of three. The Bank of America spokeswoman said she would not discuss the case of the fourth person, citing privacy concerns. Yesterday, Imam Talal Eid, a director of the Islamic Institute of Boston, praised the settlement and called it an ''indirect acknowledgement" by the bank that the account closings were wrong. Organizations ''need to know that American Muslims cannot be blindly linked to terrorists," Eid said, ''If a person was suspected, that doesn't mean that the person was guilty. We investigate. We live in America." |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #3 From the Rantburg archives. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-04-13 17:19 |
| #2 Profile: Ptech Inc. Positions that Ptech Inc. has held: Related Entities: Yacub Mirza (boardmember) Hussein Ibrahim (employee) Ptech Inc. actively participated in the following events: 1994: Ptech Founded with Support from Suspected Terrorism FinanciersPtech is founded in 1994 by Oussama Ziade, Hussein Ibrahim, and James Cerrato. Ziade came from Lebanon to study at Harvard University. As the Associated Press will describe it, Ptech’s “idea was to help complicated organizations like the military and large companies create a picture of how their assets—people and technology—work together. Then the software could show how little changes, like combining two departments, might affect the whole.” They raise $20 million to start the company. A number of Ptech employees and investors will later be suspected of having ties to groups that have been designated by the US as terrorist organizations: [Wall Street Journal, 1/6/2003; CNN, 1/6/2003; Associated Press, 2/3/2003] Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi multimillionaire. Thank you Google. So no fuc*ing more. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-158 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-04-13 16:53 |
| #1 Tom Reilly and his seeing eye dog! On the case! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-04-13 12:45 |