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agents dedicate their time just to 47th Street.
"It is work that demands tremendous manpower," said Robert Van Attan, an Eldorado officer, "since the money has to be monitored along the length and
breadth of the continent, sometimes also abroad." The target of the Eldorado agents is money, and money alone. They are not interested in drug imports, drug
deals or drug dealers. "We want to put our hands on the money. To hit their pockets," say members of the unit.
The task is difficult. In America there is no law that prohibits possessing money. On the other hand, when a large amount of cash is found in the possession of
a launderer, the agents confiscate the money. If the person can prove that the source of the money was legitimate, he gets it back. That does not happen.
The launderers are experienced. When one of them is caught and several million dollars are found in his possession, he willingly hands over the money, but
asks for a receipt. "The money is not mine. I want you to confirm that you took it," is the common request. Incidentally, their lives depend on that receipt. It is
not a simple matter to trail them. The eyes of a typical launderer are glued to his rear-view mirror. He makes sudden stops, moves from one lane to another,
chooses long and twisted routes from one place to another. Eldorado has an answer.
The investigators follow their targets with eight, ten, sometimes twelve vehicles. If necessary they use one or two helicopters. There is also sophisticated
equipment, the wonders of American technology in the fields of tapping, surveillance and code-breaking. In the first two years of its operations, Eldorado
captured $60 million and arrested 120 launderers. Compared to the scope of overall laundering, that is peanuts. "That is not the point," say the Eldorado
agents. "Obviously, it is impossible, with the existing legal restrictions, to put an end to the phenomenon. Our warfare is psychological."
Incidentally, Eldorado is not the only agency combating money-laundering. The DEA, the American Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI, also conduct
lively activity in that field. Not always is this activity coordinated.
In recent months the Eldorado agents discovered a new center of operations. It is called The Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are Colombian drug barons,
Israeli-Jewisli money launderers and Jewish-Russian mafiosi. The Colombians funnel the money, the Israelis launder it, the Russian mafiosi (who have recently
overrun New York in droves) provide the security and the muscle. A New York journalist recently told Maariv: "The Israeli Jews are ataining notoriety in the
money- laundering market. You need only look at the list of arrests and the indictments of the past 3-4 years, in order to grasp the enormous scope of Israeli
involvement in this field."
One reason for the growing power of the Jews in the business of laundering drug money is the Law of Return with its easy possibility of escape to Israel. In
May 1993, five members of the Jewish international laundering ring which had worked with the Kali cartel were arrested. The ring was exposed following an
FBI "sting" operation, as part of which it established a dummy corporation called Prism, which served the gang for laundering money.
In the course of less than one year $22.5 million were laundered through the company. The head of the ring was an Israeli named Zion Ya'akov Evenheim,
known as "Zero". Evenheim, who had a dual Israeli and Colombian citizenship, stayed in Kali, from where he coordinated the activity and supervised the
transfers of money. Most of the ring's members were arrested in May 1993. Evenheim was arrested by Interpol in Switzerland and extradited to the US. He
is cooperating with the FBI.
Additional Israeli detainees: Raymond Shoshana, 38, Daniella Levi, 30, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayon, 33, Alex Ajami, 34. Many other suspects, to whom
we will later return, escaped to Israel, and there are difficulties in extraditing them to the US.
In the course of the investigation, FBI agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations in Hebrew among the Israeli suspects. For the purpose of
translating the material, they employed, among others, Neil Elefant, a Jewish resident of New Jersey who had lived in Israel for some time and who spoke
fluent Hebrew.
Elefant translated and translated, until one day in May 1992 he was amazed to discover among the speakers a friend, Jack Zbeida, a Jewish antiques dealer
from Brooklyn, Elefant was in a difficult dilemma. He approached his rabbi, Elazar Teitz, who told him that his religious duty was to warn Zbeida. Elefant then
secretly met Zbeida and told him that he was targeted by the FBI. Alex Ajami, an Israeli Jew who was one of the heads of the gang, was also present.
Zbeida and Ajami hurried to the FBI offering to cooperate, turning in Elefant, who was arrested and charged with interfering with legal procedures.
He argued that one of the reasons for his decision to warn Zbeida was the zealousness, almost approaching anti-Semitism, which he found among the FBI
agents trying to involve the State of Israel in drug affairs. Judge Kevin Duffy sentenced Elefant to I8 months' imprisonment. In the meantime the FBI was
forced to arrest hurriedly all those involved in the affair.