U.S. v. Awan

• Decision Date: 27 July 1992
• Docket Number: No. 90-4114,90-4114
• Citation: 966 F.2d 1415
• Parties: 36 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 402 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Amjad AWAN, Akbar A. Bilgrami, Sibte Hassan, Syed Aftab Hussain, Ian Howard, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1415

966 F.2d 1415

36 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 402

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Amjad AWAN, Akbar A. Bilgrami, Sibte Hassan, Syed Aftab Hussain, Ian Howard, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 90-4114.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

July 27, 1992.

John P. Hume, Washington, D.C., for Awan.

Bennie Lazzara, Jr., Tampa, Fla., for Bilgrami.

James E. Felman, Tampa, Fla., for Hassan.

G. Richard Strafer, Miami, Fla., for Hussain.

Patrick D. Doherty, Clearwater, Fla., for Howard.

Mark Jackowski, Michael L. Rubinstein, Karla Spaulding, Asst. U.S. Attys., Tampa, Fla., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before FAY and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, and DYER, Senior Circuit Judge.

FAY, Circuit Judge:

This appeal concerns the prosecution of several international bank officers under the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, 18 U.S.C. § 1956. Appellants Amjad Awan, Akbar Bilgrami, Sibte Hassan, Ian Howard, and Syed Aftab Hussain, formerly of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International ("BCCI"), challenge their convictions and sentences, raising a broad range of issues from alleged prejudicial pretrial publicity to juror misconduct. For the following reasons, we REVERSE the conviction of Sibte Hassan and AFFIRM the convictions and sentences of the remaining appellants.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Operation

This case arose from an undercover operation conducted jointly by the U.S. Customs and Internal Revenue Services from 1986 to 1988. The purpose of the investigation, code-named "Operation C-Chase," was to identify as many Colombian cocaine traffickers and money launderers as possible and to effect seizure of evidence and property for prosecution. The appellants in this case were tried jointly for conspiracy, narcotic, and money laundering offenses.

In May 1986, Alvaro Uribe, a government confidential informant, met Gonzalo Mora, Jr., a leader of a money laundering ring from Medellin, Colombia. Uribe reported the contact to Emil Abreu, a U.S. Customs Special Agent based in Tampa, Florida. On July 14th in Miami, Agent Abreu, working undercover as "Emilio Dominguez," met with Gabriel Jaime "Jimmy" Mora, Gonzalo Mora's brother, and discussed the laundering of illegal drug proceeds in the United States. The next day, Mora ¹ called from Colombia and instructed Uribe to open bank accounts in Tampa.

The Florida National Bank in St. Petersburg ("FNB") and the Barnett Bank of Tampa ("Barnett") agreed to cooperate in the federal investigation. Agent Abreu opened an account in Uribe's name at each of the two banks as part of a scheme to assist Mora in his money laundering efforts. As per Mora's instructions, Uribe signed blank checks on the account and delivered them to Mora's father, Gonzalo Mora, Sr. The checks were then sent to the owners of the funds in Colombia where the checks were brokered for pesos in the black market.

In August, at a popular restaurant in the Little Havana section of Miami, Agent Abreu passed a business card with the name "Robert Musella" to Jimmy Mora. Agent Abreu explained that Musella was a businessman actively involved in money laundering. Musella, however, was the undercover identity of U.S. Customs Special Agent Robert Mazur, who would become the principal clandestine operative in the case.

By late 1986, Operation C-Chase had gained considerable momentum and hundreds of thousands of dollars had been successfully "laundered." Agent Abreu periodically picked up envelopes of cash from Mora, Sr. or Jimmy Mora and deposited the money into Uribe's accounts in increments less than $10,000 to avoid the currency transaction reporting ("CTR") requirements (a method known as "smurfing"). In various "drop cities," federal agents posing as couriers picked up suitcases of cash, funds derived from street sales of cocaine and crack, and deposited the money into American banks cooperating in the federal investigation.

In December 1986, in a meeting in Uribe's electronically monitored apartment in Tampa, Uribe introduced Mora to Agents Abreu and Mazur. Agent Mazur posed as a financial consultant representing American clients with legitimate funds seeking to avoid tax liability, as well as representing clients needing to launder cocaine proceeds. Agent Mazur and Mora negotiated a new method of laundering unrestricted amounts of illicit cash through American banks using front corporations. The parties agreed that Agent Mazur and his "group" would pick up drug proceeds in select American cities, deposit the money in the name of front corporations operated by Agent Mazur, send blank pre-signed checks to Mora in Colombia, and share various commission payments.

During the meeting, Mora further suggested that it would be particularly profitable if Agent Mazur could deposit money into a checking account in Panama. Checks drawn on bank accounts in Panama were worth more on the Colombian black market because of greater Panamanian bank secrecy and the physical proximity of the two countries.

In February 1987, in order to explore making deposits in Panama through an international bank, Agent Mazur opened an account at the Tampa branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Agent Mazur selected BCCI-Tampa strictly for its convenience, having seen a sign advertising BCCI's international services. Maintaining his cover, Agent Mazur met Ricardo Argudo, an officer of the bank, and explained to him that he needed the bank's services to facilitate the transfer and receipt of funds for certain South American clients who had accounts in Panama. Argudo recommended that Agent Mazur's clients open accounts at BCCI-Panama for security purposes because there was no treaty between the United States and Panama that would allow agencies of the United States to obtain banking records, unlike a recent treaty that had gone into effect with the Cayman Islands--a notorious money laundering site. After Argudo's unsolicited comments, undercover operation personnel decided to investigate whether BCCI bankers were involved in criminal activity.

In subsequent tape-recorded conversations, Argudo told Agent Mazur that if Agent Mazur formed Panamanian corporations, BCCI need not report his transactions to the IRS. Argudo also explained CTR and suspicious transaction report filing requirements, and the currency exchange practice within the Central American black market.

In April 1987, in a meeting in Los Angeles, Agent Mazur told Mora that he had devised a system to launder money through Panama. Under the system, drug proceeds would be picked up in American cities and deposited into the accounts of Agent Mazur's cash-generating front businesses. Agent Mazur then would transfer the money to his investment account at BCCI-Tampa and, from that account, send it to BCCI-Panama, where it would be deposited into an account of IDC International, S.A. ("IDC"), a Panamanian shelf corporation Agent Mazur had acquired. Checks drawn on the IDC account would then be used to distribute the money to the owners of the drug proceeds. Meanwhile, Argudo had continued to advise Agent Mazur on the transferring of cash overseas, at one point saying, "it's the dumb people that get, get caught." ² (GE 25B at 71). ³

Drug proceeds tracked by Operation C-Chase were first sent through BCCI in late 1987. In October, approximately $750,000 of drug proceeds from the "Don Chepe" organization, one of the largest cocaine producing and smuggling operations in Colombia, was wired directly from FNB to BCCI-Panama. By late November, approximately $2.2 million of Don Chepe's proceeds had been wired through the IDC account at BCCI-Panama.

On November 18, 1987, Agent Mazur received an unsolicited telephone message from Syed Aftab Hussain, an operations officer at BCCI-Panama. When Agent Mazur returned his call on the 24th, Hussain told Agent Mazur that an IDC check for $110,000 could not be redeemed by the payee because of a discrepancy between the numerals and the written amount on the face of the check. He suggested that Agent Mazur call him in advance and telefax him letters of instruction authorizing payments from the IDC account to avoid further difficulties. Hussain also suggested that they meet in Miami to become better acquainted. On December 5th, at the BCCI offices on Brickell Avenue, Hussain met with Agent Mazur and discussed world-wide transfers of money, how to better secure the confidentiality of accounts, and which BCCI employees in Miami could be trusted not to "talk loose." (GE 81B at 34).

On December 9, 1987, Hussain and Agent Mazur met again and arranged a transfer of $1,185,000 from FNB to BCCI's correspondent bank in New York, and on to BCCI-Panama. Hussain instructed Agent Mazur to use a false name and not to use the account number in order to maintain secrecy. He explained that BCCI-Panama would then issue Agent Mazur a loan collateralized by a Certificate of Deposit ("CD"), but that the connection between the CD and the loan would not be reflected in BCCI's books. Instead, documents showing other collateral would be placed in the bank's records to disguise the basis for the loan. Hussain explained that law enforcement inquiries generally were directed toward checking accounts, and this system would allow the bank to avoid disclosing these records.

During their meeting, Agent Mazur showed Hussain a newspaper article detailing the murder of Raphael Salazar, a Medellin Cartel member in Colombia, and remarked that his money came "from some of the largest, big drug dealers in South America and that is something that needs to be kept between us." (GE 85B at 48). Showing no surprise, Hussain asked in response whether the money would be placed in time deposits. Agent Mazur replied that it would be, using the loan system suggested by Hussain.

On January 11, 1988, in response to Agent Mazur's request to deal with American-based BCCI bank officers that he...