"Энди Макнаб. День независимости (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Pakistani families used it to send cash back home.
"Like Western Union, but without the ADSL lines, right?"
He nodded.
"OK, so what we've got is a centuries-old system of moving money,
originally to avoid taxes and bandits along the ancient Silk Road, and
nowadays to avoid the money laundering laws. A guy in San Francisco wants to
send some cash to, say, his mother in Delhi. So, he walks into one of these
haw alla bankers, maybe a shopkeeper, maybe even working in the money
markets in San Fran. The hawallada takes his cash and gives the guy a
codeword. The hawallada then faxes, calls or emails his counterpart in
Delhi, maybe a restaurant owner, and gives him the codeword and the amount
of the transfer. The guy's mother goes into the Delhi restaurant, says the
codeword and collects. And that's it takes less than thirty minutes to move
huge sums of money anywhere in the world, and we have no track of it.
"These haw alla guys settle their debts and commissions among
themselves. In Pakistan, business is huge. There's maybe five, six billion
dollars US sent back there every year by migrant workers just from the Gulf
states. But only one billion goes through normal banking channels.
Everything else goes via hawalladas. These guys work on total trust, a
handshake or a piece of paper between them. It's been going on for
centuries, must be about the second oldest profession. It even gets a
mention in the New Testament." He gave me a wry smile.
"Carrie's mother is a very religious woman. You know the tale of Ananis
and Safia?"
As if. I shook my head.
"Go read some day. These haw alla guys were hiding money that they were
due to give to Peter, so they were deemed sinners. And when they were
confronted with their shame they just fell down and died." There was a
pause.
"That's what you did for us, Nick: you made Zeralda fall down and die.
This haw alla network has been used to funnel money to the terrorist groups
in the Kashmir valley. It's been used by the heroin trade coming out of
Afghanistan, and now it's here, in the US.
"This is not good, Nick. Zeralda was a hawallada, and we reckon he'd
moved between four and five million dollars into this country for terrorism
in the last four years. You can be sure the legit banks are doing their bit
now and cracking down on laundering all around the world, but with haw alla
we can't check accounts or monitor electronic transfers.
"Well, we've got to close it down. Al-Qaeda is retreating and
regrouping their assets in both manpower and cash. We've got to turn off the
faucet, Nick, and we've got to do that before al-Qaeda moves all its funds
to safe harbours. Money is the oxygen for their campaign in this country
your new country. I say again, am I wasting my time here, Nick?"
I really needed room to think.
"What happened to the cousin in Los Angeles?"
"Let's put it this way, we didn't stand in his way when he jumped on
the first plane he could get out of the States. All he left behind was a few
clothes, a pair of leather motorcycle gloves, a Qur'an, and maybe sixty
pages of Arabic text off the Internet. All his accounts are frozen, but
we're not after his money. We want him to go spread the news of what