Friends,
America is sending billions the way of the Palestinian Authority,
who has done nothing to curb terror. Now, in what has to be
the most interesting and wonderful development ever,
a Rhode Island lawyer who
won a 116 million dollar judgement against the PA in
a Federal court while representing the children of a
couple murdered by the Palestinian Authority, has been able
to FREEZE all the Palestinian Authority's assets in the U.S.,
including the money the present administration is now dying to
throw into their corrupt, terrorist-supporting coffers.
America, America. Gotta love her.
Naomi
==========================================
The Boston Globe
Palestinian Authority's US assets are frozen
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | August 30, 2005
http://tinyurl.com/bccwn
WASHINGTON -- A Rhode Island lawyer trying to collect
a $116 million terrorism judgment against the
Palestinian Authority has obtained a court-ordered
freeze on all its US-based assets, severely limiting
most Palestinian economic and diplomatic activities in
the United States at a critical moment for the
fledgling government.
The frozen assets include US holdings in a $1.3
billion Palestinian investment fund meant to finance
economic development as well as bank accounts used to
pay Palestinian representatives in Washington,
according to lawyers and court documents filed in
Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and New York. Also
frozen are about $30 million in assets from the
Palestinian Monetary Authority, the Palestinian
equivalent of the US Federal Reserve.
Providence attorney David Strachman, who is
representing the orphaned children of a couple killed
in Israel by Palestinian militants, has also initiated
a court action to seize and sell the Palestinian-owned
building in New York that serves as the Palestine
Liberation Organization observer mission to the United
Nations.
The aggressive collection effort comes as the
Palestinian Authority is struggling to create economic
opportunity and set up a viable government. Now,
Palestinian officials say, the unpaid claim in the
Rhode Island court, resulting from a 2004 ruling,
threatens to complicate their efforts to become a
credible emerging state.
But Strachman said if the Palestinian government wants
to show the world that it is turning over a new leaf,
it must obey the court's judgment.
''If you are a responsible party or entity or
political organization, at the end of the day, you pay
your judgment," Strachman said in a telephone
interview from Israel, where he was on vacation.
''They have very brazenly refused to pay."
The case puts the Bush administration in the delicate
position of giving financial aid and political support
to an entity that has refused to obey a US federal
court order to pay terrorism victims.
The case has created such a problem for Palestinians
that Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian finance minister,
recently asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for
advice, according to a Palestinian official who asked
not to be identified. The State Department could not
confirm Fayyad's request last night.
The Justice Department told a court in New York that
it will submit next month the US government's position
about the PLO mission in New York, but it is unclear
how much help the Bush administration can or will
offer.
''For the administration, it's difficult," said one
Palestinian official speaking from Gaza, who asked not
to be identified because of the sensitivity of the
case. ''Right now, they are trying to figure out a
creative way to deal with it without embarrassing
anyone."
Palestinian officials have refused to pay the claim,
arguing that doing so would be a politically dangerous
admission of responsibility for terrorist acts by
militants that the Palestinian Authority contends it
does not control. Three officials interviewed by
telephone from Gaza and the West Bank say they fear
setting a precedent that would spur an avalanche of
lawsuits that could bankrupt the new government. At
least four other lawsuits involving deaths of US
citizens in Palestinian attacks are pending in US
courts.
But Strachman said that the Palestinians have billions
in overseas banks, and that they are exaggerating the
hardships that would be caused by paying the judgment.
The case is the first to result in a financial
judgment under a 1991 antiterrorism law that allows US
citizens to sue foreign organizations in civil court
for terrorism. It stems from the 1996 murders of
Brooklyn-born Yaron Ungar, a US citizen, and his
pregnant Israeli wife, Efrat, whose car was sprayed
with bullets by Hamas militants. Those convicted of
the crime were found to be carrying uniforms issued by
the Palestinian Authority, according to Strachman, who
was appointed by an Israeli court to represent the
couple's relatives.
In 2000, he filed a civil suit in Rhode Island, his
home state. He sued Hamas, as well as then-Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority, which
Arafat headed, and the PLO on the grounds that they
had encouraged Hamas. Arafat hired Ramsey Clark, the
former attorney general, who argued that the
Palestinian Authority is a sovereign state, and
deserved immunity from prosecution granted to most
countries.
Last year, the court ruled that Palestine is not a
state, and that Hamas, the PLO, and the Palestinian
Authority owed the Ungars $116 million. In March, a
federal appeals court upheld the verdict.
In April, Strachman obtained a court order to freeze
all the Palestinian government's assets in the United
States, the first step to collecting by force. Since
then, Strachman has been sending the court order to
every US financial institution where the Palestinians
might hold funds. Court proceedings are pending across
the country to determine if the frozen assets truly
belong to the Palestinian Authority or the PLO and
should be handed over.
Since Arafat's death last year, a more politically
savvy generation of Palestinian leaders has stepped up
the legal battle for release of the assets, using more
traditional arguments. Lawyers are arguing in a New
York court that the Bank of New York should release
$30 million in assets on the grounds that the
Palestinian Monetary Authority is an independent
entity. In another action, lawyers are using a UN
agreement with the United States to fight the move to
sell the PLO mission.
But the largely unpublicized court fight for the
assets has taken a major toll, Palestinians say.
George T. Abed, the governor of the Palestinian
Monetary Authority, wrote in an affidavit to the court
in June that the freezing of Palestinian Monetary
Authority assets had forced a halt of all Palestinian
dollar transactions through the United States and
could ''cause a banking crisis in the Palestinian
territories with possible fallout elsewhere in the
region." The Monetary Authority provides financial
backing for banks in Palestinian territory.
The unpaid claim has also brought a diplomatic price.
It has frustrated Palestinian efforts to send a new
ambassador to Washington because the envoy would have
no functioning bank account, according to two of the
Palestinian officials based in the West Bank.
Staff at the PLO mission in Washington have not been
paid for three months, according to Said Hamad, a
senior member of the PLO mission in Washington.
''Unless the mission is able to use these funds, . . .
it will be necessary to close the mission with
attendant injuries to Palestine and its people and
negative consequences to peace in the Middle East,"
Clark's legal team wrote in a motion earlier this
month.
Court documents show that the Bank of New York has
halted money transfers to Palestinian missions in
Ukraine, Guinea, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Ivory Coast,
China, Bulgaria, Norway, Pakistan, and Colombia, as
well as New York, because of the court order.
The case could also hamper US government aid. Last
month, the US government's Overseas Private Investment
Corporation voted to contribute $110 million to a
project that would give loan guarantees to small
businesses in Gaza. But the Palestinian Investment
Fund -- whose US assets have been frozen by the court
order -- is required to make a substantial
contribution of its money as a condition for launching
the project.
A State Department official who asked not to be
identified said the lawsuit had not yet prevented US
aid from flowing to the Palestinians, but that he did
not know whether it would be an obstacle.
Representative Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat who
is also running for mayor in New York City, has called
for the US government to halt aid to the Palestinian
Authority until the claim is paid. ''If they wish to
continue receiving checks from the US government, the
Palestinian Authority needs to pay the Ungar family
what they are owed," Weiner said in a statement last
week. ''We must make sure this ruling is enforced to
make sure that there is accountability."
Palestinians say that Strachman is going after the
very funds that have recently been made public in
celebrated reforms meant to curb corruption and
terrorism funding. But Strachman and his legal team
say they should stop making excuses and pay.
''We're looking for money," said Robert Tolchin, a New
York-based lawyer working with Strachman. ''If you
create a cost for doing wrong, people will be
motivated to stop doing wrong."
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