{"id":224033,"date":"2022-11-21T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=224033"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:38:49","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:38:49","slug":"criminals-terror-financiers-arms-traffickers-drug-runners-infiltrated-honorary-consul-ranks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/11\/criminals-terror-financiers-arms-traffickers-drug-runners-infiltrated-honorary-consul-ranks\/","title":{"rendered":"Criminals, Terror Financiers, Arms Traffickers, Drug Runners Infiltrated Honorary Consul Ranks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shadow Diplomats: Accused terror financiers, arms traffickers and drug runners among hundreds of rogue diplomats, global investigation reveals. <\/em>Honorary consuls are meant to foster ties between countries. But criminals and others accused of exploiting the position have infiltrated their ranks.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Image: Matt Rota \/ ICIJ \/ ProPublica<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Nov 2022 – <\/em>A<\/span>fter jetting into the capital of Ghana, the international arms broker who called himself \u201cExcellence\u201d greeted his buyers at the Golden Tulip hotel and proposed a secret sale: millions of dollars in missiles and grenades for use against American forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho else knows I\u2019m with Hezbollah?\u201d Faouzi Jaber asked as night fell on the four-star hotel with a life-sized sculpture of a giraffe in the lobby.<\/p>\n

Jaber, who was representing a top operative for the Iran-backed terrorist organization, offered to sweeten the deal. He would help the buyers secure coveted positions as special diplomats \u2014 known as honorary consuls \u2014 who can travel easily through airports and transport their bags without law enforcement scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will make you a consul in your country,\u201d Jaber said. \u201cAll of your friends will be consuls because when we travel \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

His associate cut in: \u201cYou\u2019ll have a diplomatic pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaber\u2019s covert offer in the fall of 2012, recorded by federal investigators, promised protection through a little-known international program that gives countries large and small the ability to enlist private citizens to serve as volunteer diplomats around the world.<\/p>\n

Founded centuries ago, the honorary consul system was meant as a lifeline for countries unable to afford foreign embassies but has since broadened into a mainstay of international relations, embraced by a majority of the world\u2019s governments.<\/p>\n

Unlike ambassadors and other professional emissaries, consuls work from their home countries, drawing on connections and clout to promote the interests of the foreign governments that appoint them. In exchange, consuls gain entry into the lofty world of diplomacy and receive some of the same protections and perks provided to career diplomats.<\/p>\n

Under an international treaty, their archives and correspondence cannot be seized. Their consular \u201cpouches\u201d \u2014 bags, boxes and shipping containers of any weight and size \u2014 are protected from searches. The title and swag, which can include special identity cards, passports and license plates, open doors in industry and politics.<\/p>\n

But corrupt, violent and dangerous appointees, including those accused of aiding terrorist regimes, have turned a system meant to leverage the generosity of honorable citizens into a perilous form of rogue diplomacy that threatens the rule of law around the world.<\/p>\n

A first-of-its-kind global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and ProPublica<\/a> identified at least 500 current and former honorary consuls who have been accused of crimes or embroiled in controversy. Some were convicted of serious offenses or caught exploiting their status for personal gain; others drew criticism for their support of authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n

These numbers are almost certainly an undercount \u2014 no international agency tracks honorary consuls, and dozens of governments don\u2019t publicly release their names.<\/p>\n

ICIJ and ProPublica found that convicted drug traffickers, murderers, sex offenders and fraudsters have served as honorary consuls. So have weapons dealers and those who have advanced the interests of North Korea, Syria and other corrupt governments.<\/p>\n

Thirty honorary consuls have been sanctioned by the United States and other governments, including 17 who were designated while they held their posts. Some were members of Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s inner circle blacklisted after Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Nine current and former honorary consuls identified by ICIJ and ProPublica have been linked to terrorist groups by law enforcement and governments. Most were tied to Hezbollah, a political party, social services provider and militant group in Lebanon designated by the United States and other countries as a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah\u2019s attacks in Israel, Argentina, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere have wounded and killed hundreds, including 241 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers who perished during a 1983 peacekeeping mission in Beirut when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into their barracks. Earlier this year, a Hezbollah operative was convicted in New York<\/a> for receiving weapons and bomb-making training from the organization and casing targets for future attacks, including the Statue of Liberty and Times Square.<\/p>\n

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American Marines searching for survivors and bodies after a Hezbollah suicide car bomber destroyed the U.S. base in Beirut in 1983. Image: Peter Charlesworth\/LightRocket via Getty Images <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former U.S. officials who have investigated Hezbollah\u2019s financial network said the use of honorary consul status by the terrorist group is intentional, well organized and woefully unexamined. In March, the Treasury Department sanctioned a prominent businessman in Guinea<\/a>, accusing him of funneling money to Hezbollah and using his honorary consul status to move in and out of the country with little scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\u201cHezbollah has realized that if they use these honorary consuls \u2026 they can basically move stuff with impunity and no one is ever going to bust them \u2014 you flash your diplomatic passport, no questions asked,\u201d said David Asher, a former senior counterterrorism finance adviser for the Department of Defense assigned in 2008 to help oversee a federal investigation of Hezbollah\u2019s criminal network. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge seam in our international law enforcement capabilities sweep.\u201d<\/p>\n

To identify terrorist operatives and other honorary consuls accused of wrongdoing, ICIJ and ProPublica reviewed court records, government and public policy reports and news archives from six continents. Reporters from more than 50 international media organizations and student journalists from Northwestern University also probed cases.<\/p>\n

Some of the identified consuls were accused of wrongdoing previously and named to their diplomatic posts anyway. The majority of the consuls drew scrutiny while they held their positions.<\/p>\n

“They can basically move stuff with impunity and no one is ever going to bust them \u2014 you flash your diplomatic passport, no questions asked.”<\/strong> <\/em>
\n\u2014 Former counterterrorism adviser David Asher<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In North Macedonia, intelligence officials found that two consuls allowed their offices to be used as a base for a Russian propaganda operation aimed at limiting the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.<\/p>\n

In Myanmar, a consul sanctioned by the U.S. and other governments reportedly used his connections to help supply weapons to the brutal military junta during its genocidal campaign against ethnic minorities.<\/p>\n

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Once accused, some consuls have tried and sometimes successfully dodged criminal inquiries through bogus assertions of sweeping legal immunity that have confused or obstructed police and prosecutors.<\/p>\n

The lawlessness and claims of impunity have largely been met with silence: Few governments have publicly called to put safeguards in place, despite warnings from law enforcement and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsuls act completely autonomously and are not controlled by the State they represent. \u2026 The Spanish government has no chance of intervening in their affairs,\u201d investigators in Spain wrote in a confidential 2019 report about three honorary consuls under investigation for laundering money for a suspected drug trafficker.<\/p>\n

The handful of governments that have stepped in to review the honorary consul system, including those in Canada, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Montenegro, have reported lapses in oversight or dangerous breakdowns. Liberia once dismissed nearly all of its honorary consuls, citing reports of criminal activity.<\/p>\n

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Shadow Diplomats:<\/a> Meet 14 Controversial Honorary Consuls<\/a><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After reporters raised questions, Germany and Austria dismissed a consul in Brazil. Another in Switzerland announced his resignation.<\/p>\n

Thousands of honorary consuls remain active around the world, though there is no reliable count or any way to determine how often they break laws or abuse their privileges.<\/p>\n

Retired Drug Enforcement Administration supervisory special agent Jack Kelly, who helped bring Jaber to justice, worries that dangerous consuls go undetected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat people actually do with that diplomatic immunity,\u201d Kelly said, \u201cmost of the time we\u2019ll never really know.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A system to empower and protect<\/h2>\n

Honorary consuls date back at least to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when Greece, China, India and countries in the Middle East appointed volunteer foreign liaisons to expand commerce. The arrangement caught on around the world.<\/p>\n

In the United States, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the late 1700s referenced<\/a> the use of consuls \u2014 one in London was tasked with intelligence gathering, records and studies show.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government, however, stopped appointing its own honorary consuls overseas in 1924, opting to rely exclusively on career diplomats. It was a prescient move: Three years later, an international panel warned that awarding special advantages to private citizens enabled them to compete on an \u201cunfair basis\u201d with business rivals.<\/p>\n

Honorary consuls, the panel said, should \u201cno longer exist,\u201d adding that most \u201care far busier with their personal affairs than with those of the country which has conferred the title upon them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerns about exploitation mounted, according to hundreds of pages of notes and documents from the United Nations archives. In 1960, an expert on the subject appointed by the United Nations warned that honorary consuls were not subject to disciplinary controls in the same way that career diplomats were.<\/p>\n

Still, when dozens of governments gathered a few years later in Vienna, they enshrined in international law a valuable set of benefits that included few protocols for oversight.<\/p>\n

Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations<\/a>, honorary consuls were guaranteed the \u201cfreedom of movement and travel\u201d in the countries where they served. They could communicate without restraint, their consulate records and correspondence protected from searches and their offices protected from \u201cany intrusion \u2026 or impairment of \u2026 dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consuls received legal immunity in matters involving their work. Though immunity was not extended to unrelated offenses, the treaty stipulated that honorary consuls would be entitled to criminal proceedings \u201cwith the minimum of delay\u201d and \u201cthe respect due \u2026 by reason of his official position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some countries, troubled in part by the secrecy rules for consular pouches \u2014 which can be moved by plane, train, car, ship or courier \u2014 insisted they would not protect them. Other countries have opted out altogether, declining to appoint or receive consuls.<\/p>\n

But diplomacy is a delicate affair: Restricting another country\u2019s representatives, volunteer or otherwise, can produce a reciprocal response. The vast majority of countries have signed on, and though some apply privileges and immunities differently in practice, the overarching rules have remained unchanged in the nearly six decades since.<\/p>\n