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Old 01-08-2004   #1
Rolo
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Join Date: Dec 2002
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If you want real privacy - away from the IRS, CIA etc., then you could also use the "Hawala" banking system. Its the asian underground banking system, with branches in places you wouldn´t belive :-)

Quote:
Known as hawala in India, hundi in Pakistan or fei qian in China, Asia's underground banking system is enormous and widespread.

While an ancient form of financial transaction, the secretive “hawala/hundi” system has come to recent scrutiny due to its almost certain usage by terrorist organizations such as Osama Bin Laden’s Al Queda network. While on one hand symbolic of graft, drug trafficking, money-laundering and black money, the hawala system at the same time enjoys both widespread acceptance and widespread usage among much of the population of South Asia and the Middle East. The vast majority of hawala remittances have been routine transactions. Indeed, the vast majority of the hawala transactions occur in country as an affordable means of fund transfer. However, statistically as a whole, the hawala system is a large phenomenon as evidenced by the following numbers:

As much as 60% of money from Burma's drug trade passes through these underground payment system
§ $2 billion to $5 billion moved through the hawala system annually in Pakistan, more than the amount of foreign transfers through the country's banking system

With a mostly deliberate absence of record keeping, these non-bank financial entities leave virtually no trail for investigators to follow. It works like this: A client approaches a local underground dealer in, for example, New Dehli--usually a business like a goldsmith's shop, currency trader or a travel agency. He deposits $10,000 to be remitted to an associate in, for example, Bangkok. The shop in New Dehli, one among hundreds found in every major bazaar, gives the sender a receipt or chit, something as simple as a specially marked movie-ticket stub or a low-value rupee note. The chit is mailed to the Bangkok recipient, who then presents it to an associated goldsmith or travel agent and withdraws the $10,000 in Thai baht. With no banks involved, there is no record of the cross-border transaction.

Veiled in secrecy, performed through personal contacts, lacking records and difficult to prove – the hawala system has often been used as a blunt instrument for accusation by corrupt political candidates, governments and law enforcement agencies to further agendas where the proof of charges is often unnecessary. Much of the myth and murkiness of the hawala system stems from these types of instances.
Read more at http://www.fiducite.com/Fiducitations/Fidu...ng%20System.htm
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