AMMAN: The US government organized a four-day workshop in Jordan to teach officials from the Arab countries how to detect and investigate the smuggling of money, said a statement from the US embassy in Amman Saturday. The US has been working with Jordan and other Arab countries to ensure that banking institutions are subject to appropriate oversight and that they have effective programs in place to prevent money-laundering and terrorist financing. Participants, including representatives from Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Tunisia and Yemen, examined anti-money laundering standards used by the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based inter-government body set up in 1989 by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. The statement said the group s standards are designed to ensure that terrorists and criminals cannot finance their activities or launder the proceeds of their crimes through the physical cross-border transportation of currency. This week, US federal prosecutors said two New York residents were indicted on charges of trying to smuggle $500,000 from the US to Jordan. Authorities said a grand jury in Hartford, Connecticut returned an indictment charging 35-year-old Hassan Abuzaitoun and 33-year-old Mohammad Alazzam with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to smuggle bulk cash from the United States. Both are naturalized US citizens from Jordan residing in Yonkers, New York. Jordanian authorities have often asserted that Jordan was free of money laundering because of its strict monetary regulations and practices. In 2004, three different groups of families of suicide bombing victims in Israel filed suits in a Brooklyn, NY federal court against Jordan s largest financial institution - Arab Bank - alleging that it moved donations from Saudi Arabia to Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The bank denied the allegation. It later decided to close down its New York branch saying it was pursuing its strategy to focus on operations in the Arab world and Europe. -AP
