You will hear a common theme from U.S. Government officials involved in counter-terrorism about “following the money.” The sad truth, however, is most have no clue about how to do that. When I, along with five other partners, formed BERG Associates LLC in 1998, we carved out a niche as a unique group of specialists in money laundering investigations. The star of our team, John Moynihan, is a forensic accountant who did four years with DEA running its undercover money laundering operations in New York City. I learned a lot from John. He is a certified genius in this area.

We worked on the Bank of New York Russian Money Laundering case as one of our first jobs. We investigated all the major tobacco and liquor companies for money laundering on behalf of the European Union and the Governors of Colombia. We were fortunate to have informants that worked inside major Colombian and Mexican cartels as well as a member of a Russian Clan. The photo heading this article is from one of the cases we worked in Panama. A Colombian cartel sent members to Panama with these “bricks” of dollars to purchase gold. The money was the proceeds of drug trafficking.

We briefed a group of intel analysts at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in 2006 on how to track Mokhtar Belmokhtar by focusing on his cigarette trade. He moved a lot of Philip Morris product — Marlboro to be precise. Unfortunately, JSOC did not act on our recommendations. Belmokhtar was not stealing Philip Morris Marlboros. He was acquiring the product through a Philip Morris distributor. If you have a terrorist organization that is trafficking in cigarettes, or liquor or Toyota trucks, all you have to do is get your hands on the product and trace backwards.

Remember when ISIS was at its strongest in Syria in 2013? They were driving around in brand new Toyota pick up trucks. All that needed to be done was get the serial number off of one vehicle and work backwards. Moynihan and I briefed this to a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) officer who was given the task of “following the money.” To my knowledge he never followed up on our recommendation of how to figure out who was supplying ISIS with those trucks. They did not steal them off of a car lot.

Here is an 11 minute look at Russia’s allegation that Burisma was involved in terrorist finance. The big unanswered question is what was Cofer Black, a former senior CIA official who headed up the Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) in 2001, doing while serving on the board of Burisma and a Latvian Bank that was later implicated in possible terrorist financing? Was that just a crazy coincidence?

Real life is better than the movies. No doubt. Today’s surprise comes out of Moscow, with an announcement from the State organization charged with investigating major crimes that the Ukrainian company Burisma was involved with financing terrorists:

Russia’s top investigative body announced Tuesday that it has launched a criminal probe into senior officials in the United States and NATO member countries who are suspected of “financing terrorism.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it has “established” that money from commercial organizations had been used to “eliminate prominent political and public figures” inside and outside Russia in recent years, as well as to “inflict economic damage” against the country. . . .

The top law enforcement body named the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings as one of the implicated organizations. U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden served as a member of Burisma’s board of directors between 2014 and 2019.

So, what’s the big deal. We already knew about Hunter. What does that have to do with the CIA? Does the name Cofer Black ring a bell?

International Energy Group Burisma has expanded its Board of Directors to include an expert in the field of security and strategic development. Joseph Cofer Black, a former Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and Ambassador at Large for counter-terrorism recently joined the Board as an independent director at Burisma Group. Ambassador Black resigned from public service in 2005 after a 30 year career  and is considered a  leading expert and significant figure on  U.S. and international security issues.  

How about that. A career CIA officer, with no experience in the oil and gas industry beyond pumping gas for his own vehicles, gets a sweet spot on a board alongside Hunter Biden. Before joining the board of Burisma, Mr. Black snagged a spot on the board of a Latvian Bank:

The extraordinary meeting of the shareholders of joint-stock company Baltic International Bank (‘the Bank’) was held on 11 October 2016 where decisions on changes in the composition of the Bank’s Supervisory Board were adopted.

Joseph Cofer Black has been invited to join the existing members of the Bank’s Supervisory Board– Valērijs Belokoņs, Vlada Belokoņa, Andris Ozoliņš and Dr. Hans – Friedrich Von Ploetz – as of November 1, 2016.

Cofer Black’s ostensible qualification for serving on the Bank’s board was his background in counter terrorism. In an interview with DELFI, a business magazine, Cofer claimed expertise in terrorist financing:

What does counterterrorism have in common with banking? How much time do you have? Actually [they are] shockingly similar. I spent the last 12 years of my time [at the CIA] in counterterrorism, but before that I worked in other fields [of intelligence]. An important thing in counterterrorism is what we now call financial counterterrorism. At the beginning of my career, there was little if any combating of terrorism in the financial area. It was my responsibility, but I wasn’t very eager to get into it, because it’s timeconsuming, labor-intensive and expensive. In that time you are trying to outsmart and stop terrorists before they kill people.

Turns out, Cofer was of no help to the Latvian bank on this issue. In 2018 the bank was fined:

Latvia’s financial regulator, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FKTK) said December 6 it was imposing a 1.5 million euro fine on Baltic International Bank (BIB) “for deficiencies in the Bank’s internal control system.”. . .

“In 2018 the FKTK carried out an on-site inspection of the Bank, as well as a targeted inspection, during which the FCMC identified that the Bank’s internal control system does not fully comply to the regulatory requirements governing the prevention of money laundering and terrorism and proliferation financing (hereinafter – AML/CTPF),” the FKTK said.

“The Bank had not established an adequate internal control system to meet its risks in the field of prevention of money laundering and terrorism and proliferation financing, which would ensure effective compliance with the regulatory requirements,” it added, explaning that “in several cases” the bank had not taken sufficient measures to make certain that a beneficial owner indicated was the beneficial owner; had not obtained documentation and had not taken necessary measures to make certain of the origin of financial means in its customer accounts and had not documented conclusions; had not ensured appropriate and high-quality enhanced customer due diligence; had not duly decided on termination of business relationships with customers and, in a particularly damning comment “had not paid sufficient and special attention to untypical large, complex, inter-related transactions with no apparent economic purpose or clear legal purpose.”

Going back to the charges leveled by Russia’s Investigative Committee, if Cofer Black was on the Burisma Board during the time that Burisma funds were being transferred to groups with ties to terrorists, then it is quite understandable that Russia will be inclined to believe the CIA is implicated, at least indirectly, in terrorist attacks in Russia. Too bad that Latvian bank did not hire me and my partner instead of Cofer. We actually wrote and implemented compliance programs for banks and investment firms that kept them out of this kind of trouble. I can’t wait to see the evidence.

A couple of interesting and unusual interviews today. The first was with Marcos Soares, a Brazilian who lives and works in Italy. The second was with Sarah at DD Geopolitics. We discussed CIA links to terrorist organizations.