When will FARC Membership List be released?

By: Kenneth Rijock - Financial Crime Consultant, for World-Check - More about the Author - 2 April 2008 - La lista de miembros inscritos en las FARC contenida en los 16 mil archivos extraidos por el Ejercito Colombiano de las pc's del segundo al mando Raul Reyes, seguramente abrira muchas puertas. Seran revelados los encargados de lavar dinero, financistas de terroristas, colectores de fondos, extorcionistas de artistas, secuestradores, agentes sobornables y todos los usuales sospechosos. Este archivo es quizas el mas importante en toda la coleccion. Pero cuando sera desclasificada por Colombia para que asi la comunidad financiera Mundial pueda chequear nuevamente su lista de clientes? Especialmente cuando los financistas de las FARC probablemente estan moviendo dinero sucio y obteniendo pasaportes nuevos rapidamente en el Hemisferio Occidental para cubrir sus huellas. Esta lista representa un paso adelante en la batalla contra el terrorismo financiero y deberia estar libremente disponible.
The information contained in the list of enrolled members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known to most as the FARC, which was one of the 16,000 files reportedly retrieved by the Colombian Army from the computers of FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes, will surely open many doors. FARC money launderers, terrorist financiers, fund-raisers, extortion artists, kidnappers, sleeper agents and all the other usual suspects, will be revealed. This file is possibly the most important item in the entire data collection. But when will it be declassified by Colombia, so that the global financial community can check their customer lists against it? Especially when FARC financiers are probably scrambling around the Western Hemisphere, moving dirty cash, obtaining new passports, and otherwise covering their tracks. This list represents a quantum leap forward in the battle against terrorist financing, and it should be made freely available. Whilst we fully understand the reluctance of the Government of Colombia to take full advantage of the data, arresting undercover FARC agents placed in financial institutions and government offices, the private sector also needs timely access to that data for many valid reasons. For example: FARC members who hold valid Venezuelan passports will certainly choose to travel under those alternate identities, meaning that the FARC list and Venezuelan databases should be immediately compared, lest FARC agents escape to other countries, and being unidentified, place FARC funds in foreign banks. The commander of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda Velez, is not the only senior FARC leader to live safely in Venezuela. If the FARC disintegrates inside Colombia, expect its leadership to move their families outside the region. Where are they living? You saw that Reyes' older children, for example, are at university in Cuba, but some younger FARC children live and attend school inside Venezuela, considered by them to be a safe haven. The FARC list must be checked against the names of minor Colombian children that appear in the classified Venezuelan database known as Cambios de Visa, which contains special visas granted to extraneros (foreigners) by the Venezuelan Government. Both the FARC adults, and their children, are to be identified as rated as extremely high risk to unacceptable high risk.Banks in North America and the European Union need to run the FARC membership list against their lists of clients forthwith. They also need to check their wire transfer records, both historically and in the future, against these names. This represents a rare opportunity to learn the actual names of members of a designated terrorist organisation. Please, Colombia, make it available to the financial sector. http://www.world-check.com/articles/2008/04/02/when-will-farc-membership-list-be-released/