PRC-UTE
10th December 2005, 20:53
The Ira Bagman and Kim Jong Il's hot dollars
Sean Garland is legendary in Ireland for his violent republican past.
But was he also a frontman for a counterfeiting scheme run by the
communist regime of North Korea? America wants to extradite the Workers Party
chief claiming he smuggled millions of dollars in fake $100 bills
David McKittrick reports
Published: 08 December 2005
THE INDEPENDENT
It is a tale of codenames and counterfeiting, of the United States
secret service, Russia and North Korea, of international political and
criminal conspiracy and intrigue, of millions of dollars in illicit
currency.
Kim Jong Il, the paranoid leader of the hermit state of North Korea,
has a key role in it. Former IRA and ex-KGB operatives also have parts,
along with the Russian mafia and underworld criminals in England and
Ireland. Five-star hotels in Moscow feature in it: so too may Guantanamo
Bay.
And it all centres on an Irish pensioner, who claims America is
persecuting him because of his political beliefs and wants to put him in
Guantanamo. But this is no ordinary pensioner. This is Sean Garland,
legendary in Ireland for his republican and revolutionary life. At one time he
tried to shoot the British out of Ireland; recently, his primary
struggle has been against capitalism.
Reverential republican lore has it that he risked his life when,
himself wounded by British bullets, he carried away a dying comrade following
an abortive IRA attack on a security base in Northern Ireland.
Today, he is president of the left-wing Workers Party. He acknowledges
his violent IRA past * he could hardly deny it, since it is the stuff
of commemorative ballads * but says he is now involved only in political
activity.
The latest act in his incident-packed career came last week when he
jumped bail in Belfast, where he had been arrested. He has appeared in
court several times on a US extradition warrant, but he has now fled south
to his home. He is vociferously campaigning to remain in the Irish
Republic, but the US Attorney General's Office has said it will issue a
fresh extradition warrant. It is also seeking to have six other men * one
of them reputedly a former KGB man * brought to the US.
The American case is that Garland and the others have been involved in
a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting operation, run by the government
of North Korea and encompassing more than a dozen countries worldwide.
The long and detailed indictment alleges that Garland * "aka The Man
with the Hat" * has used trips to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea,
Russia and other countries for criminal purposes. The American
assertion is supported by police in Moscow.
Travelling as president of the Workers Party, he is said by the US to
have used the cover of his position in the party to organise the
purchase, transportation and resale of forged dollar bill notes on a huge
scale.
These are no ordinary banknotes. They are among the best forgeries in
the world, a fact that causes the American authorities huge anxiety.
Called " superdollars," they are of such exceptionally high quality that
they often deceive banks and experts.
Superdollars so worried the US that in 1996 it brought in a series of
new security measures, redesigning the $100 bill by changing the central
portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Other intricate new safeguards included
an enhanced embedded security thread, a security watermark, changed
microprinting and the use of an optically variable ink.
To Washington's dismay, however, it took the North Koreans just a few
years to come up with a sophisticated forgery based on the changed note,
so that a new type of superdollar began to turn up. The US does not go
so far as to say that North Korea is intent on undermining its entire
economy. But it regards the operation as an unwanted instance of free
enterprise that is undermining confidence in the dollar.
Garland played an important part in a network, the US claims, which
included criminals based inBirmingham, gangsters in places including
Moscow and Latvia, and Irish republicans linked to the small and secretive
Official IRA, generally known as "the stickies".
The network, according to the US, criss-crossed Europe, operating in
places such as Belarus, Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Germany.
It is said to refer to the forged notes as "jackets" and "paperwork" .
A key connection was in Moscow, where Garland reportedly went to the
North Korean embassy to collect bogus money. This had been brought out of
North Korea, it was said, in diplomatic bags.
The pattern of the outfit's alleged activities has already been fleshed
out by an investigation by the BBC Northern Ireland television
programme Spotlight.
Korean defectors confirmed that the production of superdollars was a
government operation. "We bought the best of everything, the best
equipment and the best ink," said one. "We also had the very best people,
people who had real expertise and knowledge in the field. When government
officials or diplomats travelled to south-east Asia they distributed the
counterfeit notes, mixed in with the real ones at a ratio of about
50-50."
In Moscow, General Vladimir Uskov of the Russian interior ministry
police has confirmed that Garland and others have been under surveillance
by special services. "Information we received showed that he was
involved in the supply of counterfeit dollars," the general said.
"We registered his contacts with the North Korean embassy. He visited
the embassy several times. Our information was that people working there
may have been involved in the transportation of counterfeit dollars."
One of Garland's most intriguing alleged associates was David Levin, an
Armenian-born Russian citizen who once worked with the KGB and later
moved to England, while keeping contact with the Moscow mafia.
The American indictment describes him as "aka David Batikovich
Batikian, aka Gediminas Gotautas, aka Russian Dave". Investigators believe that
through Russian contacts he arranged passports and visas for some of
those involved.
In recent years Levin has had a particular run of bad luck, for in 2002
he was jailed for nine years in Britain at Worcester Crown Court for
conspiring to import superdollars. Last year, the Court of Appeal in
London rejected his appeal against a confiscation order for £789,000 after
hearing he had made more than £1m from superdollars.
Levin, who was found to own a range of property in Birmingham and
London, has to pay the money within two years or face an extra four years
behind bars.
Two of the other men sought by the US were also jailed along with him.
One of them, Terence Silcock, was given six years after admitting
conspiring to distribute the fake notes. Described by police as a lifelong
professional criminal in the Birmingham area, he was said to have
personally dealt with more than $4m worth of forged notes.
Garland, who was not charged with Levin and the two Englishmen, freely
acknowledges on his own website that his past contains much violence.
He is one of the last of the flinty old IRA generation that waged a
failed campaign in the 1950s. Originally a traditionalist, he joined the
internal IRA faction which by the 1960s subscribed to Marxism and
Stalinism. Known as a man of iron ideology and self-belief, even the fall of
the Berlin wall did not deflect him from his commitment to Communism.
Few believe that anything in his colourful career has been motivated by
personal gain, regarding him as one of the keepers of the Communist
flame. Although in Moscow staff at the five-star Metropol hotel say he
regularly stayed there, his decades-long reputation for devotion to his
causes means no one thinks he was indulging in luxury for its own sake.
In the 1950s he joined the IRA, who then instructed him to infiltrate
the British Army to procure arms. He carried out his mission
successfully, the IRA seizing guns from an Army barracks with his inside help.
In his own words, he was "actively involved in organising and
participating in a number of major operations from 1955-56". The most famous of
these was when he led an IRA squad that attacked a police station in
County Fermanagh where two IRA militiamen, Sean South and Fergal
O'Hanlon, were shot dead. A republican song acclaims, "Another martyr for old
Ireland, Sean South from Garryowen". Garland was seriously wounded in
the incident. In the years that followed, he was imprisoned on various
occasions in both parts of Ireland for IRA activities.
When the organisation split into traditional and Marxist factions in
the late 1960s he opposed the "narrow nationalism" of the Provisionals,
and pursued a left-wing political path as one of the leaders of what was
known as the Official IRA. That faction announced a ceasefire in 1972,
but for years remained intermittently involved in violence. In
particular, it was embroiled in a series of often lethal feuds with the
mainstream IRA and other republican splinter groups.
There were many killings, especially during the 1970s, as the Official
IRA suffered fatalities and killed opponents. The feuds were made all
the more vicious by the fact that many of those involved were former
colleagues who knew each other well.
Today, the Official IRA shuns publicity, but rumours occasionally crop
up that members are involved in robberies, forgery activities and in
running drinking clubs. In one 1975 incident, Garland was almost killed
in a feud when he was reputedly shot by rival republicans. Undeterred,
he has over the years remained active in the Workers Party, which he
heads and dominates.
The party clings to the hope that Protestants and Catholics in Northern
Ireland will unite to overthrow the capitalist system. This has not
worked, attracting no appreciable Protestant support while holding
diminishing appeal for Catholics. The Workers Party once held a number of
seats in the Irish parliament, but its strength has been greatly reduced.
It contests elections, but it receives less than 1 per cent of the vote
on either side of the border.
Its approach is marked domestically by opposition to Sinn Fein and
traditional republicanism, and abroad by its links with surviving Communist
and Socialist elements. The party is an implacable opponent of US
foreign policy which, it asserts, "has inflicted great suffering, repression
and untold deaths". Garland says this is why the US is after him.
He denies any current involvement in the Official IRA and has denied "
any involvement in any criminal activity" and knowledge of
superdollars. He did not answer bail, he says, because extradition arrangements
between the US and the UK mean there is no possibility of his being able
to face allegations "in an open and fair court".
He argues that coverage of the affair has been "sensationalised".
Garland's return to the Republic points to a lengthy extradition process.
The long-running affair of the dodgy superdollars seems set to run for a
long time yet.
Sean Garland is legendary in Ireland for his violent republican past.
But was he also a frontman for a counterfeiting scheme run by the
communist regime of North Korea? America wants to extradite the Workers Party
chief claiming he smuggled millions of dollars in fake $100 bills
David McKittrick reports
Published: 08 December 2005
THE INDEPENDENT
It is a tale of codenames and counterfeiting, of the United States
secret service, Russia and North Korea, of international political and
criminal conspiracy and intrigue, of millions of dollars in illicit
currency.
Kim Jong Il, the paranoid leader of the hermit state of North Korea,
has a key role in it. Former IRA and ex-KGB operatives also have parts,
along with the Russian mafia and underworld criminals in England and
Ireland. Five-star hotels in Moscow feature in it: so too may Guantanamo
Bay.
And it all centres on an Irish pensioner, who claims America is
persecuting him because of his political beliefs and wants to put him in
Guantanamo. But this is no ordinary pensioner. This is Sean Garland,
legendary in Ireland for his republican and revolutionary life. At one time he
tried to shoot the British out of Ireland; recently, his primary
struggle has been against capitalism.
Reverential republican lore has it that he risked his life when,
himself wounded by British bullets, he carried away a dying comrade following
an abortive IRA attack on a security base in Northern Ireland.
Today, he is president of the left-wing Workers Party. He acknowledges
his violent IRA past * he could hardly deny it, since it is the stuff
of commemorative ballads * but says he is now involved only in political
activity.
The latest act in his incident-packed career came last week when he
jumped bail in Belfast, where he had been arrested. He has appeared in
court several times on a US extradition warrant, but he has now fled south
to his home. He is vociferously campaigning to remain in the Irish
Republic, but the US Attorney General's Office has said it will issue a
fresh extradition warrant. It is also seeking to have six other men * one
of them reputedly a former KGB man * brought to the US.
The American case is that Garland and the others have been involved in
a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting operation, run by the government
of North Korea and encompassing more than a dozen countries worldwide.
The long and detailed indictment alleges that Garland * "aka The Man
with the Hat" * has used trips to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea,
Russia and other countries for criminal purposes. The American
assertion is supported by police in Moscow.
Travelling as president of the Workers Party, he is said by the US to
have used the cover of his position in the party to organise the
purchase, transportation and resale of forged dollar bill notes on a huge
scale.
These are no ordinary banknotes. They are among the best forgeries in
the world, a fact that causes the American authorities huge anxiety.
Called " superdollars," they are of such exceptionally high quality that
they often deceive banks and experts.
Superdollars so worried the US that in 1996 it brought in a series of
new security measures, redesigning the $100 bill by changing the central
portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Other intricate new safeguards included
an enhanced embedded security thread, a security watermark, changed
microprinting and the use of an optically variable ink.
To Washington's dismay, however, it took the North Koreans just a few
years to come up with a sophisticated forgery based on the changed note,
so that a new type of superdollar began to turn up. The US does not go
so far as to say that North Korea is intent on undermining its entire
economy. But it regards the operation as an unwanted instance of free
enterprise that is undermining confidence in the dollar.
Garland played an important part in a network, the US claims, which
included criminals based inBirmingham, gangsters in places including
Moscow and Latvia, and Irish republicans linked to the small and secretive
Official IRA, generally known as "the stickies".
The network, according to the US, criss-crossed Europe, operating in
places such as Belarus, Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Germany.
It is said to refer to the forged notes as "jackets" and "paperwork" .
A key connection was in Moscow, where Garland reportedly went to the
North Korean embassy to collect bogus money. This had been brought out of
North Korea, it was said, in diplomatic bags.
The pattern of the outfit's alleged activities has already been fleshed
out by an investigation by the BBC Northern Ireland television
programme Spotlight.
Korean defectors confirmed that the production of superdollars was a
government operation. "We bought the best of everything, the best
equipment and the best ink," said one. "We also had the very best people,
people who had real expertise and knowledge in the field. When government
officials or diplomats travelled to south-east Asia they distributed the
counterfeit notes, mixed in with the real ones at a ratio of about
50-50."
In Moscow, General Vladimir Uskov of the Russian interior ministry
police has confirmed that Garland and others have been under surveillance
by special services. "Information we received showed that he was
involved in the supply of counterfeit dollars," the general said.
"We registered his contacts with the North Korean embassy. He visited
the embassy several times. Our information was that people working there
may have been involved in the transportation of counterfeit dollars."
One of Garland's most intriguing alleged associates was David Levin, an
Armenian-born Russian citizen who once worked with the KGB and later
moved to England, while keeping contact with the Moscow mafia.
The American indictment describes him as "aka David Batikovich
Batikian, aka Gediminas Gotautas, aka Russian Dave". Investigators believe that
through Russian contacts he arranged passports and visas for some of
those involved.
In recent years Levin has had a particular run of bad luck, for in 2002
he was jailed for nine years in Britain at Worcester Crown Court for
conspiring to import superdollars. Last year, the Court of Appeal in
London rejected his appeal against a confiscation order for £789,000 after
hearing he had made more than £1m from superdollars.
Levin, who was found to own a range of property in Birmingham and
London, has to pay the money within two years or face an extra four years
behind bars.
Two of the other men sought by the US were also jailed along with him.
One of them, Terence Silcock, was given six years after admitting
conspiring to distribute the fake notes. Described by police as a lifelong
professional criminal in the Birmingham area, he was said to have
personally dealt with more than $4m worth of forged notes.
Garland, who was not charged with Levin and the two Englishmen, freely
acknowledges on his own website that his past contains much violence.
He is one of the last of the flinty old IRA generation that waged a
failed campaign in the 1950s. Originally a traditionalist, he joined the
internal IRA faction which by the 1960s subscribed to Marxism and
Stalinism. Known as a man of iron ideology and self-belief, even the fall of
the Berlin wall did not deflect him from his commitment to Communism.
Few believe that anything in his colourful career has been motivated by
personal gain, regarding him as one of the keepers of the Communist
flame. Although in Moscow staff at the five-star Metropol hotel say he
regularly stayed there, his decades-long reputation for devotion to his
causes means no one thinks he was indulging in luxury for its own sake.
In the 1950s he joined the IRA, who then instructed him to infiltrate
the British Army to procure arms. He carried out his mission
successfully, the IRA seizing guns from an Army barracks with his inside help.
In his own words, he was "actively involved in organising and
participating in a number of major operations from 1955-56". The most famous of
these was when he led an IRA squad that attacked a police station in
County Fermanagh where two IRA militiamen, Sean South and Fergal
O'Hanlon, were shot dead. A republican song acclaims, "Another martyr for old
Ireland, Sean South from Garryowen". Garland was seriously wounded in
the incident. In the years that followed, he was imprisoned on various
occasions in both parts of Ireland for IRA activities.
When the organisation split into traditional and Marxist factions in
the late 1960s he opposed the "narrow nationalism" of the Provisionals,
and pursued a left-wing political path as one of the leaders of what was
known as the Official IRA. That faction announced a ceasefire in 1972,
but for years remained intermittently involved in violence. In
particular, it was embroiled in a series of often lethal feuds with the
mainstream IRA and other republican splinter groups.
There were many killings, especially during the 1970s, as the Official
IRA suffered fatalities and killed opponents. The feuds were made all
the more vicious by the fact that many of those involved were former
colleagues who knew each other well.
Today, the Official IRA shuns publicity, but rumours occasionally crop
up that members are involved in robberies, forgery activities and in
running drinking clubs. In one 1975 incident, Garland was almost killed
in a feud when he was reputedly shot by rival republicans. Undeterred,
he has over the years remained active in the Workers Party, which he
heads and dominates.
The party clings to the hope that Protestants and Catholics in Northern
Ireland will unite to overthrow the capitalist system. This has not
worked, attracting no appreciable Protestant support while holding
diminishing appeal for Catholics. The Workers Party once held a number of
seats in the Irish parliament, but its strength has been greatly reduced.
It contests elections, but it receives less than 1 per cent of the vote
on either side of the border.
Its approach is marked domestically by opposition to Sinn Fein and
traditional republicanism, and abroad by its links with surviving Communist
and Socialist elements. The party is an implacable opponent of US
foreign policy which, it asserts, "has inflicted great suffering, repression
and untold deaths". Garland says this is why the US is after him.
He denies any current involvement in the Official IRA and has denied "
any involvement in any criminal activity" and knowledge of
superdollars. He did not answer bail, he says, because extradition arrangements
between the US and the UK mean there is no possibility of his being able
to face allegations "in an open and fair court".
He argues that coverage of the affair has been "sensationalised".
Garland's return to the Republic points to a lengthy extradition process.
The long-running affair of the dodgy superdollars seems set to run for a
long time yet.