When track­ing down the ter­ror­ist money trail, Wash­ing­ton will inevitably wind up in Switzer­land. Swiss banks have long been used by shady char­ac­ters world­wide to laun­der money. One of them might be a good start­ing point for U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors seek­ing ter­ror­ist fund­ing sources and illicit bioweapons trade.

by Lucy Komisar
PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

GENEVA–To pro­tect Amer­ica from ter­ror­ist attack, the United States must inves­ti­gate illicit trade in bio­log­i­cal weapons and trace the move­ment of ter­ror­ist money. A good start­ing point is a con­tro­ver­sial Swiss bank that may have facil­i­tated the sale of haz­ardous bio­log­i­cal mate­ri­als to Islamic militants.

The bank, Banca del Got­tardo in Lugano, appears to have han­dled one or more sales from a known Russ­ian bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­ducer to a Swiss com­pany with links to sev­eral rad­i­cal Islamic groups.

The bank denies involve­ment, and no doc­u­ment has appeared which might con­firm an illicit bioweapons trade. Nev­er­the­less, an exam­i­na­tion of doc­u­ments here, inter­views and other sources raise enough red flags to sug­gest that those trac­ing ter­ror money might look closely at such deals.

A Decem­ber 1993 list of con­tracts with the Inter­plas­tica com­pany obtained by this reporter lists a $20 mil­lion pur­chase of “injecta­bles” by Bio­preparat, the Russ­ian state devel­oper of bio­log­i­cal weapons. Accord­ing to two for­mer Soviet Bio­preparat insid­ers, bioweapons pro­duc­tion at the plant was hid­den under the cover of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal work.

Dr. Vladimir Pasech­nik, who was the admin­is­tra­tive head of Bio­preparat, defected to Britain in 1989 and revealed to British intel­li­gence the true nature of Bio­preparat. Dr. Ken­neth Alibek, a for­mer deputy direc­tor of Bio­preparat who also defected and came to the United States in 1992, told the same to the CIA.

Bio­preparat since at least 1973 car­ried out offen­sive bio­log­i­cal weapons research, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion. It pro­duced and stock­piled hun­dreds of tons of anthrax and dozens of tons of plague and smallpox.

Inter­plas­tica is reg­is­tered in Switzer­land as an engi­neer­ing and trad­ing com­pany deal­ing in chem­i­cals and plas­tics. Founded in the 1960s, it spe­cial­ized in help­ing the coun­tries of the East bloc pierce West­ern embargoes.

From the early 1990s, the Banca del Got­tardo exer­cised con­trol over the indebted Inter­plas­tica through bank offi­cial Franco Peduzzi, accord­ing to a source in Switzer­land famil­iar with the bank’s oper­a­tions. A fax mes­sage accom­pa­ny­ing the list of con­tracts is addressed to Franco Peduzzi at the bank. In a phone call, Peduzzi denied knowl­edge of the company.

A Sep­tem­ber 1994 fax to the bank indi­cates that the Banca del Got­tardo han­dled what appears to be another Inter­plas­tica deal with Bio­preparat. The memo notes that “for our friends of Torola, ‘Bio­preparat’ deposited through ‘Inter­plas­tica‚’ two cont. of 20 kg of mate­r­ial in the secu­rity box of the bank. P. Mamal­adze advised — ready for trans­ac­tion [of] ‘bonds.’”

Torola is a shell com­pany reg­is­tered in Lugano and run by sev­eral indi­vid­u­als of Geor­gian and Yugosla­vian ori­gin. One of them, Paata Guramovich Mamal­adze, was iden­ti­fied by a source famil­iar with the con­tracts as a Geor­gian arms trafficker.

The rest of the doc­u­ment pur­ports to be about “trade related claims against bonds.” Bio­preparat is not in the busi­ness of bond trad­ing. The phrases refer­ring to “bonds” are set apart in quo­ta­tion marks through­out the document.

Franco Rogan­tini, spokesman for the bank in Lugano, said a bank inves­ti­ga­tion showed “no record of any com­mer­cial deal­ings with Bio­preparat.” The bank denied “hav­ing know­ingly entered into busi­ness with weapon pro­duc­ers and traders.”

The Banca del Got­tardo has already been the object of legal inquiries in a Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and money-laundering case. A Swiss inves­tiga­tive mag­is­trate accused Pavel Borodin, who man­aged Russ­ian state prop­erty, of skim­ming $30 mil­lion from Russ­ian gov­ern­ment con­struc­tion con­tracts. The Swiss dossier details how Begh­jet Pacolli, a native of Kosovo and head of the Mabe­tex con­struc­tion com­pany, fun­neled pay­offs to Borodin and other Russ­ian offi­cials, includ­ing Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin and his daughters.

The Banca del Got­tardo held accounts for Borodin and other alleged cul­prits and moved money through its branch in the off­shore secrecy haven of the Bahamas.

Pacolli ran Inter­plas­tica, and Pacolli is linked to rad­i­cal Islamic groups. Pacolli finances the rad­i­cally anti-Serb news­pa­per “Bota Sot,” based in Zurich, which has been con­demned for sow­ing “hate, intol­er­ance and strife” by the head of the Kosovo mis­sion of the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­rity and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe. Through the Fund for Recon­struc­tion of Kosovo (FORK), in Lugano, he finances the Kosovo Lib­er­a­tion Army, or UCK, (known in the West as KLA) described by Robert Gel­bard, America’s for­mer spe­cial envoy to Bosnia, as “Islamic ter­ror­ists.” Europol (the Euro­pean Police Orga­ni­za­tion) says the UCK is involved in drug and weapons traf­fick­ing, pros­ti­tu­tion and ille­gal immigration.

Attempts to reach Pacolli through phone and e-mail mes­sages to his Lugano head­quar­ters, his Swiss res­i­dence, and Mabe­tex offices in Florida and Alba­nia yielded only an e-mail response from Lugano: “Mr. Behg­jet Pacolli worked for Inter­plas­tica till 1990 and there is absolutely no rela­tion with what you men­tioned in your e-mail. He does not know any­thing about it because he has left the com­pany [a] long time before. Thanks for tak­ing notice.”

Inter­plas­tica is now in the process of liq­ui­da­tion. Renzo Peduzzi, listed in the gov­ern­ment reg­istry as a mem­ber of its board, refused to take a phone call.

Banca del Got­tardo Pres­i­dent Clau­dio Gen­er­ali is a leader of the Rad­i­cal Demo­c­ra­tic Party, which gov­erns Switzer­land. The bank appears to enjoy pro­tec­tion from seri­ous offi­cial scrutiny. Wash­ing­ton should encour­age Swiss author­i­ties to investigate.