ГУЛаг Палестины

Experts in the field estimate that 75% to 80% of the active traders on the street are Jews. A large number of them are very pious Orthodox Jews, mainly Hassids. There is also a respectable representation of Jews from Iran and Syria, usually also very pious. One can get along fine in Hebrew on 47th Street. There are many more kosher restaurants in the area than in all of Tel Aviv. The place is also the biggest laundry for drug money in the US.

The expansion of the phenomenon of laundering drug money in the US in general, and on 47th Street in particular, led to the establishment of a special American task force to combat the phenomenon. The unit is called Eldorado, after the mythical South American city of gold. It is staffed with 200 agents, officials of the US customs and internal revenue agencies. Eldorado, established in April 1990, investigates the money- laundering in general. Fifty of its agents dedicate their time just to 47th Street.

"It is work that demands tremendous manpower," said Robert Van Attan, an Eldorado officer, "since the money has to be monitored along the length and breadth of the continent, sometimes also abroad." The target of the Eldorado agents is money, and money alone. They are not interested in drug imports, drug deals or drug dealers. "We want to put our hands on the money. To hit their pockets," - say members of the unit.

The task is difficult. In America there is no law that prohibits possessing money. On the other hand, when a large amount of cash is found in the possession of a launderer, the agents confiscate the money. If the person can prove that the source of the money was legitimate, he gets it back. That does not happen.

The launderers are experienced. When one of them is caught and several million dollars are found in his possession, he willingly hands over the money, but asks for a receipt. "The money is not mine. I want you to confirm that you took it," is the common request. Incidentally, their lives depend on that receipt. It is not a simple matter to trail them. The eyes of a typical launderer are glued to his rear-view mirror. He makes sudden stops, moves from one lane to another, chooses long and twisted routes from one place to another. Eldorado has an answer.

The investigators follow their targets with eight, ten, sometimes twelve vehicles. If necessary they use one or two helicopters. There is also sophisticated equipment, the wonders of American technology in the fields of tapping, surveillance and code-breaking. In the first two years of its operations, Eldorado captured $60 million and arrested 120 launderers. Compared to the scope of overall laundering, that is peanuts. "That is not the point," say the Eldorado agents. "Obviously, it is impossible, with the existing legal restrictions, to put an end to the phenomenon. Our warfare is psychological."

Incidentally, Eldorado is not the only agency combating money-laundering. The DEA, the American Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI, also conduct lively activity in that field. Not always is this activity coordinated.

In recent months the Eldorado agents discovered a new center of operations. It is called The Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish money launderers and Jewish-Russian mafiosi. The Colombians fu

One reason for the growing power of the Jews in the business of laundering drug money is the Law of Return with its easy possibility of escape to Israel. In May 1993, five members of the Jewish international laundering ring, which had worked with the Kali cartel, were arrested. The ring was exposed following an FBI "sting" operation, as part of which it established a dummy corporation called Prism, which served the gang for laundering money.

In the course of less than one year $22.5 million were laundered through the company. The head of the ring was an Israeli named Zion Ya'akov Evenheim, known as "Zero". Evenheim, who had a dual Israeli and Colombian citizenship, stayed in Kali, from where he coordinated the activity and supervised the transfers of money. Most of the ring's members were arrested in May 1993. Evenheim was arrested by Interpol in Switzerland and extradited to the US. He is cooperating with the FBI.

Additional Israeli detainees: Raymond Shoshana, 38, Daniella Levi, 30, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayon, 33, Alex Ajami, 34. Many other suspects, to whom we will later return, escaped to Israel, and there are difficulties in extraditing them to the US.

In the course of the investigation, FBI agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations in Hebrew among the Israeli suspects. For the purpose of translating the material, they employed, among others, Neil Elefant, a Jewish resident of New Jersey who had lived in Israel for some time and who spoke fluent Hebrew.

Elefant translated and translated, until one day in May 1992 he was amazed to discover among the speakers a friend, Jack Zbeida, a Jewish antiques dealer from Brooklyn, Elefant was in a difficult dilemma. He approached his rabbi, Elazar Teitz, who told him that his religious duty was to warn Zbeida. Elefant then secretly met Zbeida and told him that he was targeted by the FBI. Alex Ajami, an Israeli Jew who was one of the heads of the gang, was also present. Zbeida and Ajami hurried to the FBI offering to cooperate, turning in Elefant, who was arrested and charged with interfering with legal procedures.

He argued that one of the reasons for his decision to warn Zbeida was the zealousness, almost approaching anti-Semitism, which he found among the FBI agents trying to involve the State of Israel in drug affairs. Judge Kevin Duffy sentenced Elefant to I8 months' imprisonment. In the meantime the FBI was forced to arrest hurriedly all those involved in the affair.

In spite of their hurry, many Israeli Jews involved fled to Israel. Some few of the tens of Israeli and American Jews who fled to Israel on this occasion are: Raymond Shosliana, Adi Tal, David Va'anunu, his nephew Yisliai Vanunu, Ya'akov Cohen. Most of them came out of the affair with a lot of money which they also took to Israel.

The story of Adi Tal is worthy of elaboration. He is an impressive youth, handsome, with a good record in the army, a son of a fine Israeli family, formerly a security guard at El Al. All that did not hinder Tal from becoming involved in laundering drug money in 1988. In March 1988 the American authorities arrested I I members of the laundering ring, including Tal and his good friend Nir Goldstein, also an Israeli.

The investigators at the time said that Tal and his friends had operated cautiously, used aliases and codes and lived in constant fear. They would receive large amounts of money from Colombian couriers, divide the money into sums of $10,000 (any amount over 10,000 dollars that is deposited in an American bank requires a report), deposit the sums in banks and convert them into travelers' checks which they sent, by means of international couriers, to a dummy corporation in Panama. The most popular code which Tal's gang used was taken from the diamond industry. When information was transmitted about the transfer of a diamond of 30.4 carats, it meant the sum of $30,400. Tal worked for Jose Satro, the money launderer of the Kali cartel. The Colombians constantly pressured him to increase the scope of the laundering.

Tal was afraid. "He lived in constant fear, his bags were always packed and he was prepared to flee at any minute to Israel," one investigator said.