US: The US Treasury Department's recent clampdown on the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) accusing it of raising funds on behalf of the designated terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has once again thrown the spotlight on the shadowy 'LTTE lobby' whose access to powerful US lawmakers helped to legitimise this and other Tiger fronts allowing them to operate without let or hindrance for almost a decade, according to the US based Sri Lankan Express.
Investigations show that TRO operatives and individuals whose addresses or phone numbers are linked to the TRO, regularly made contributions to the campaign funds of the very legislators who have actively promoted the separatist cause and been harshly critical of Sri Lanka's war on the Tigers.
"TRO passed off its operations as charitable, when in fact it was raising money for a designated terrorist group responsible for heinous acts of terrorism," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), explaining the action taken November 15 to freeze the US held assets of the TRO.
The Treasury said the TRO has raised funds on behalf of the LTTE through a network of "individual representatives" and that it was the preferred conduit of funds from the US to the LTTE.
Since the TRO 'hung its shingles' in the US, almost 10 years ago, these individual representatives, many of them successful Tamil professionals, have been the LTTE's foot soldiers, active in several states, raising funds while establishing and developing political contacts.
As reported by the Associated Press some time ago, the Chicago Tribune had faxed three pages from a federal indictment involving money laundering to a US Congressman's office which indicated that the trips of two unidentified individuals to Sri Lanka in 2005 were paid with $13,150 laundered through a US bank.
The source of those funds - whether they were raised for 'charity' or extorted from the Tamil diaspora - is not known.
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