Thread: Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas Front Group CAIR: Money Laundering Out of US Capital

Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas Front Group CAIR: Money Laundering Out of US Capital

Our law firm, the American Freedom Law Center, has been engaged in a long and drawn out lawsuit against the Hamas front group, CAIR. Hamas-CAIR has been running a global criminal money laundering operation out of the nation's capital. "The money laundering scheme was discovered in the course of legal discovery in unrelated federal litigation arising out of allegations by five of CAIR's former clients that CAIR defrauded them by failing to provide the legal services they had been promised. (See here for the latest update in that case."

To avoid reporting these millions of dollars from the dubious Islamist sources and to avoid registering as an agent for a foreign sovereign as required by federal law, CAIR created a separate company called CAIR-Foundation, Inc., to serve as an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) charitable organization. CAIR itself quit filing any federal tax returns from 2008-2010 and allowed the IRS to withdraw its status as a 501(c)(4), converting itself to a regular for-profit corporation. CAIR also stopped all of its operations and became simply a holding company, transferring, at least on the books, all of its employees and equipment to CAIR Foundation.

What has been revealed in discovery is devastating. I address this issue in my column today at WND, but this is the money....:

CAIR — the Largest Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas Front Group in America — is Running a Money Laundering Operation AFLC, September 20, 2013.

The largest Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in America is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). After three years of litigation in federal court in Washington, D.C., AFLC has uncovered facts demonstrating that CAIR has been running a global criminal money laundering operation out of the nation's capital.

The money laundering scheme was discovered in the course of legal discovery in unrelated federal litigation arising out of allegations by five of CAIR's former clients that CAIR defrauded them by failing to provide the legal services they had been promised. (See here for the latest update in that case).

While CAIR bills itself as the nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization, it has been named by the U.S. Department of Justice in federal litigation as a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group and an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial, the nation's largest terrorism finance prosecution to date, resulting in convictions in 2008 for all five leaders of the terrorist financing ring operating as the Holy Land Foundation Muslim charity. Prison sentences ranged from 20 years to 65 years.

As brought out in the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial, CAIR founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad were participants in the conspiracy, although not formally charged. These two men formed CAIR in 1994 in an effort to create a front organization to further the Muslim Brotherhood goals in this country. But, like many criminal fronts, CAIR itself turns out to be a criminal organization.

Part of CAIR's criminal operations included representing itself to be a public interest law firm created to protect the civil rights of Muslim Americans. In reality, however, CAIR has unlawfully employed non-lawyers to engage in legal services. In one case, CAIR employed a man by the name of Morris Days as its "Resident Attorney" who claimed to represent hundreds of CAIR clients in various state and federal litigation matters. In reality, CAIR and its "Resident Attorney" were not filing any actual lawsuits on behalf of these clients. Moreover, after the fraud was discovered, CAIR attempted to cover-up the whole affair with threats of litigation against the victims and finally with payoffs to other potential witnesses.

AFLC represents five of these former CAIR "clients" who had sought out CAIR's legal services for various matters, including workplace discrimination, immigration, and family law matters. Three of these former CAIR clients are Muslims, including two African Americans and a Pakistani.

Specifically, in 2010, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., against CAIR on behalf of these CAIR victims, alleging fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. After several years of legal discovery, which required Yerushalmi to go to court on numerous occasions to compel CAIR to turn over documents, which in turn led the court to warn CAIR's in-house counsel, Nadhira Al-Khalili, that her conduct was unprofessional and would result in the court filing a formal Bar complaint against her if it did not cease. That case is now awaiting the court's ruling on the extent of CAIR's liability.

In the midst of gathering evidence to prove the plaintiffs' case, AFLC discovered a massive criminal money laundering organization run out of CAIR's D.C. offices. The scheme was created in 2005 by CAIR, which at the time was an IRS-approved 501(c)(4) lobbying organization. CAIR's problem was that as a registered lobbying group it had to report to the IRS the source of funds received over $5,000. The specific problem was that CAIR was receiving millions of dollars from oil-rich Gulf Arabs, the same sources who were also financing the Muslim Brotherhood to prepare for the "Arab Spring" and even Al Qaeda operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. CAIR's expensive headquarters in the nation's capital was financed with a one million dollar grant from a Saudi Arabian bank. At one point, CAIR even sought one million dollars from Libya's now dead strong man, Moamar Ghaddafi, in an effort to distribute to Muslim Americans Qurans with an Islamist translation and commentary together with Muslim Brotherhood literature.

To avoid reporting these millions of dollars from the dubious Islamist sources and to avoid registering as an agent for a foreign sovereign as required by federal law, CAIR created a separate company called CAIR-Foundation, Inc., to serve as an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) charitable organization. CAIR itself quit filing any federal tax returns from 2008-2010 and allowed the IRS to withdraw its status as a 501(c)(4), converting itself to a regular for-profit corporation. CAIR also stopped all of its operations and became simply a holding company, transferring, at least on the books, all of its employees and equipment to CAIR Foundation.

The result is that CAIR now receives millions of dollars from foreign Islamist sources every year, but only has to report the amounts of its income and not its sources. CAIR then transfers these monies to CAIR Foundation as loans or grants, and CAIR Foundation then only has to report its source as CAIR. The result is a criminal money laundering operation that allows CAIR to funnel millions of dollars from dubious foreign sources into a lobbying group fronting as a charity without the legally required disclosure of sources.

Indeed, CAIR is so brazen about its operation that it maintains only one website for CAIR, which does not even mention CAIR Foundation. In this way, CAIR receives smaller donations from presumably Muslim Americans made payable to "CAIR," thus allowing CAIR to decide which "CAIR" will get the money. These small U.S. donations are then deposited into CAIR Foundation's bank account, which in turn reports these small innocuous donations to the IRS. The big money transfers from the Gulf, however, are conveniently deposited in the CAIR bank account, which does not require any disclosure of the source of the funds. This presents no problem to the Gulf Islamist terror financiers because they are obviously not looking for a U.S. tax deduction. What CAIR does not explain of course is why a Gulf Arab would be transferring these kinds of sums to a holding company that has no employees or operations.

An interesting, but as yet unanswered question is why the IRS would have registered CAIR Foundation as a legitimate 501(c)(3) organization in 2005? An even more intriguing question is why, in 2012, the IRS re-registered CAIR Foundation as a legitimate 501(c)(3) charitable organization, particularly after it had lost its status because it failed to file the organization's federal tax reports (on IRS form 990) for three consecutive years and in light of the obvious illegal use of CAIR as a money laundering front? This, at a time when the IRS was improperly holding up conservative and pro-Israel groups' applications for the same 501(c)(3) status causes even heightened concerns.

CAIR's criminal financial operations raise a whole host of questions the IRS and the Department of Justice should be investigating. The obvious question to be asked now is whether the IRS can get past its politically-motivated witch hunt of the Tea Party and pro-Israel groups and whether the Department of Justice will finally prosecute CAIR and its founders for their direct and indirect involvement in the material support of terrorism.


Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/09/mu...oetTbZGrSls.99

CLAIM: CAIR IS GETTING AWAY WITH A ‘MONEY LAUNDERING’ SCHEME UNDER THE NOSE OF THE IRS

Sep. 23, 2013 4:30pm Erica Ritz

Over the weekend, the Daily Caller released a report claiming the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) has established a system whereby it essentially considers itself both a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4), depending on what is most profitable at the time.

In doing so, the DC writes, CAIR “conceals donations from overseas through a series of shell organizations, according to documents from court actions involving the Muslim advocacy group.”

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, speaks on March 9, 2011, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Most Americans only know CAIR as a solitary organization, but apparently there’s far more to it when it comes time to report to the Internal Revenue Service.

“As a registered lobbying group, CAIR is required to report to the IRS contributions over $5,000. Its shifting 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) branches, however, make it possible to collect millions of dollars from oil-rich Muslim nations without disclosure. Documents show CAIR has received millions of dollars in overseas contributions and tens of millions in pledges from overseas,” The Daily Caller writes. “CAIR’s convoluted structure and funding machinations are dizzying. Today, the original Council on American Islamic Relations doesn’t exist at all. In June 2013, CAIR changed its name to the nondescriptly named Washington Trust Foundation, Inc. (WTF).”

Based on the documents to which the Daily Caller links, it seems as though the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network, Inc. changed its name to the Washington Trust Foundation, Inc., or “WTF” for short:

Certificate of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Corporations Division (Photo via the Daily Caller)

The Daily Caller continues:

The original 1994 CAIR (now CAIR-Action Network) maintained only one website, which listed itself as a 501(c)(3) at the bottom of page. It made no distinction between its lobbying and non-profit arms. In this way, it was able to solicit funds both transparently and non-transparently.

Under IRS regulations, an organization may have 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) related entities, but it must maintain a wall between the two. This is accomplished by establishing separate bank accounts, board of directors, bookkeeping, and payroll. CAIR, though, had none of these.

International donors, like the government of Qatar, have made donations to “CAIR.” CAIR deposits such donations into whatever bank account it chooses: its own non-reporting lobbying account or CAIR Foundation’s 501(c)(3) charitable tax deductible bank account. CAIR can then move the money to CAIR Foundation with no reporting requirements.

“Plentiful legal evidence, acquired in the course of a lawsuit—plus CAIR’s own official filing documents to the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) and IRS—make clear that CAIR has engaged in a thinly-disguised money laundering operation,” David Reaboi, vice president for strategic communications at the Center for Security Policy, told The DC.

“In addition to violating its 501(c)(3) regulations, CAIR’s undisclosed and hidden foreign donations amount to violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act as well,” he reportedly continued.

TheBlaze reached out to CAIR’s national communications director Ibrahim Hooper, but did not receive an immediate response.

Read the entire report at The Daily Caller.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...se-of-the-irs/