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NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1908.aspx Treasury Identifies Kassem Rmeiti & Co. for Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. as Financial Institutions of “Primary Money Laundering Concern” 4/23/2013 In First Use of Section 311 Against a Non-Bank Financial Institution, Treasury Acts to Protect the U.S. Financial System from Foreign Exchange Houses Tied to Global Narcotics and Money Laundering Networks and Hizballah WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named two Lebanese exchange houses, Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange (Rmeiti Exchange) and Halawi Exchange Co. (Halawi Exchange), as foreign financial institutions of primary money laundering concern under...

"US Accuses Guinea-Bissau Military Officers of Drug Trafficking Two top officers are named as major players in cocaine shipment from Latin America to Guinea-Bissau" SNIPPET: "Na Tchuto denied the allegations on Friday and said that he will cooperate with the United States government. He also said the charges of drug trafficking do not make sense because he was in Portugal on June 29, 2008 when the cocaine shipment from Venezuela arrived. Na Tchuto said he did not return to Guinea-Bissau until July. Na Tchuto also pointed out that he was not arrested by Interpol when he was in Gambia or...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

Three of the four drug kingpins who were extradited from Mexico over the weekend will be sent to California to face an array of trafficking charges, officials said Wednesday. Hector Palma Salazar, the suspected former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy during a court hearing Wednesday that he agreed to be transferred to San Diego, where he was indicted in 1995 on charges of conspiring to distribute large quantities of cocaine. On Tuesday, brothers Ismael and Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, former chiefs in the Arellano-Felix cartel in Tijuana, also agreed to be transferred, Assistant U.S. Attorney...

Text of report by "E.B." entitled "Serbian drug barons are big players in Europe" published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 27 March Belgrade: Serbian drug barons, who maintain strong ties with cocaine traders in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of this narcotic, have strong business contacts also with the Albanian mafia, police information indicates. These good contacts on both sides of the Atlantic and highly functional trafficking routes, whereby tons of cocaine are smuggled from South America to Europe, have enabled them to take a place among the most powerful drugs traffickers in Europe. People have only recently become aware...