Cairo, Egypt-After the 9\11 attacks in New York, many reports surfaced about the the Muslim Brotherhood and the large sums of money owned by them, spread throughout global financial markets. Reports indicated how the money came from suspicious transactions through money laundering, drug dealing and arms dealing.
Many of the reports revealed the role of Brotherhood businessmen who created banks in the Bahamas, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, such as Al-Taqwa Bank and the United Islamic Bank, and overseas corporations in order to facilitate the process of transferring funds between branches of the international Brotherhood, to ensure secrecy from intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies, which were already monitoring Brotherhood operations which were funding terrorist organizations like al-Qaida, Hamas among others.
After the overthrow of the Brotherhood in Egypt, information emerged about Brotherhood funds and activities dealing with billions of dollars around the world. Of course the group learned of what happened to the former regime of Mubarak, so they decided not to invest a lot of money on the homefront, instead choosing safer places where they could hide the money away from Egyptian authorities.
Since the January 25 revolution, the group started to transfer its investments to hiding places that cannot be easily traced or reached. The amounts transferred were huge in nations under the the European Union and Ireland in particular because of the strict laws disclosure laws there that are even more strict than Switzerland. Surprisingly even the Brotherhood strong support from President Obama, they did not park a lot of money in U.S. banks.
According to little known information, the Brotherhood invested heavily in Turkey, where the ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is an important cog of the Muslim Brotherhood. With big shares in Turkish banks, the group felt uneasy and turned to the United Kingdom, where the official headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood is located. There they invested funds in the London Stock Market under names that cannot be tracked back to the Brotherhood.
The other most important field in the economic future of the Brotherhood is cyberspace, which has become the fifth-largest economic area for investment around the world. As I wrote before in CFP, Khayrat El Shater, Brotherhood deputy supreme leader is the biggest investor and the supervisor of the so-called electronic Brotherhood militias.
El Shater started investing in some Forex companies on the Internet. Available information indicates that El-Shater put millions of dollars in three main companies working in the field of Forex, including Etoro, Hot Forex, and Noor CM.
Noor CM, a Kuwaiti company, has many speculators in the Arabian Gulf, where companies with enormous oil money, also have very strong assets. This ensures no bankruptcy or closure someday, but because the Kuwaiti government officially does not accept the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and because of the weak relations between the two countries during the rule of Morsi, he faced difficulties in continuing to invest in that company.
El Shater next tried to buy Hot Forex, which is associated with Barclays Bank, but the company refused his offers agreeing only to let him have a small percent of shares and denying him control; thus El Shater tried to buy Eroto, the third company, which is registered in Cyprus and has a number of branches around the European Union. But his attempts failed there too.
After all these botched attempts, The Brotherhood boldly decided to establish their own Forex company, but needed a high degree of technical support from legitimate established Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, all of them having servers in Israel. The Brotherhood Forex adventure is slated to begin in 2014. El Shater also registered the company in Ireland in order to gain the confidence of Arab investors who prefer companies within the EU.
The big surprise is that the Muslim Brotherhood is developing a plan to control the share prices in Google. Their next step is trying to influence the value of the Swiss franc so that the group can negotiate with the Swiss government regarding the Al-Taqwa Bank owned by Youssef Nada. The Swiss government closed the bank because of suspicious activities and evidence of large transfers of funds to known terrorist organizations at the request of the United States after 9\11. A government search of Nada’s villa unearthed a number of documents proving his involvement in supporting and financing terrorist groups.
Analysts believe that investments owned by the Brotherhood is the main reason for the number of European countries recently releasing statements supporting the Brotherhood. They are choosing to describe what happened as a military coup, ignoring 35 million Egyptians going out to the streets in June to demand the removal of Morsi and the elimination of terrorism due to the Muslim Brotherhood and their followers.
Analysts also believe that the Brotherhood moved from a covert group to one of the largest economic powers in the world, making many countries fear the organization should it withdraw its investments, which could impact their economies. This represents a means of pressure the Brotherhood can use, enabling them the means to negotiate and redirect foreign policies in the face of the Egyptian government during the strong crisis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
