Customer Reviews

United Arab Emirates Central Bank & 9/11 Financing

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Every American should salute this honest auditor who has written this book in his own style.(keeping in view that English is not his native language and he is not a professional writer)

The contents of the book is more important than the language and the book details the core 9/11 financing from Dubai more accurately than even the 9/11 Commission Report. The Book is a must for all bankers and auditors and exposes money laundering by HSBC, a top UK bank.

The Author (and his family have been living a life of threats) should be rewarded and acknowledged for writing this book.

Anthony Gonsalves, New York

Iqbal Hakim's book on the United Arab Emirates and its involvement in the financing of the 9/11 attacks on America is a very important book.

As one other reviewers note, the book is not that well organized, and sometimes veers too much into personal issues.

Nevertheless, the book provides clear evidence--and photographs of original documents--to prove some highly questionable irregularities in the UAE banking system.

It is really amazing that so little has been done to prosecute the offending banks.

But with the recent U.S. court decisions to allow cases to proceed in New York against several foreign banks charged with complicity in laundering funds for, or passing money to, terrorists, the tables may be finally about to turn.

Hakim's second book, Taking People for a Ride; HSBC Middle East: The Devil's Bank, is even more important than this one.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Iqbal Ismail Hakim presents a strong case against the lack of scrutiny over possible 'irregular' accounts held by HSBC in the United Arab Emirates. We all know that money laundering is nothing new, and, in certain cases, it is difficult to flag irregularities of transactional movement, regarldess of the money monitoring systems in place by international monitoring agencies (Hakim never mentions this). Regardless, what is so blatant, and I tip my hate to the author, is that Hakim exposes specific events and transactions - showing the negligence of not only the HSBC leaders, but the Sultan and other various leaders in the UAB. There are times where the author's bitterness toward how he was treated is clear; and for this I must question not the verifiability of what he presents, but why he choose to stop short in sharing the avenues that he went thru to expose what is a critical dilemma to the free world: government leaders and bank executives working with blind eyes to the dubious money launders who can potentially cause great damage to our society.

Overall, Hakim's book is a must read for anyone interested in learning about how certain inner-sanctums at large international financial institutions work. The author was very courageous in publishing this book and the content that he presents.

This book, which appears to be self-published, could be a blockbuster if it were picked up by a reputable publisher and COPYEDITED! The author, who is from India, was an auditor at a UAE bank and clearly knows the inside scoop on this very corrupt country of seven sheikdoms. However, his command of English grammar, punctuation, and spelling of people's names is really horrible. Unfortunately, the book suffers not just from a lack of nuts-and-bolts copyediting but also from a general structural editing. He needs help with the overall organization and expression of his material. The presentation of facts is fairly chaotic, bordering at times on incoherent, and accompanied by many documents too tiny to read but not labeled or explained very well. I am very interested in the author's topic and greatly appreciate and respect him for what he is trying to do, but I must say that I regret having paid $19.95 for the book in this condition.

Certainly an inadequate assessment of 9/11 banking which is not surprising when you consider how shabbily he runs his own accountancy business. Apparently his offices are only open 2 months out of the year, and he is unreachable the rest of the year. He actually had the nerve to charge my credit card for tax filing, and its already June, and the IRS still hasn't received my electronic filing. The majority of people who utilize his tax services never go back, and I'm sure that whoever reads this idiotic book will ever read anything else he's ever penned. Stay away from anything with this author's name on it, you will be well served.