Category Archives: Zaineb Istrabadi

Hot Air

Chase-ing Foreigners Away

I ran a blind item here a couple of weeks ago about “[o]ne of Bloomington’s most respected and beloved citizens” who claims she was given the bum’s rush by her bank because she is “closely related to someone who works for a foreign government.” Reps of this person’s bank (she spoke with a number of people on the phone regarding the matter) said they were sorry for giving her the thumb but that’s the way their bank interpreted the Patriot Act.

I elected to withhold the names of the person and the bank until I could speak with someone from that institution (although I did slip in a huge clue by mentioning the bank in question in another context.)

Anyway, I’ve finally contacted the bank and now have its side. So, here’s a fuller version of the story:

The ex-customer whose account was disco’d is Zaineb Istrabadi, a senior lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. Her ex-bank is Chase, the US consumer and commercial banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Zaineb was told that because her brother Feisal Istrabadi once worked for the government of Iraq, Chase would terminate her account. Born in the US in 1962, Feisal attended IU as an undergrad and graduated from the Maurer School of Law in 1988. He was in private practice until 2004, during which time he worked closely with members of the opposition to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.

Istrabadis

Zaineb Istrabadi (L) & Feisal Istrabadi

[Zaineb photo — Herald Times]

After Hussein’s overthrow by US-led forces in 2003, Feisal was rewarded by the new Iraq government with an ambassadorship to the United Nations. He returned to Bloomington in 2007 to take a job with his alma mater law school, where he is a professor of practice. He specializes in “research on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries in transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Feisal’s own Chase account, acc’d’g to Zaineb, was terminated “years ago,” ostensibly because he’d worked for the government of Iraq.

Zaineb, who lives with her ailing mother, says she received a call one morning from her Chase branch office. After some hemming and hawing, the rep said, “Your business is no longer welcome at Chase.”

Zaineb says she’s been a customer of the same bank for at least 10 years. JPM Chase was the third company to own the bank during her term as a customer there. The way Zaineb sees it, she should have been considered a Chase customer for all those ten-plus years.

When Zaineb asked why Chase was taking this action, she was told the Patriot Act was to blame. Or, at least, Chase’s interpretation of same. Zaineb adds that all the Chase reps she spoke with were “extremely apologetic.”

Nevertheless, Zaineb was left looking to park her cash in another bank, which she’s done. She’s also hurt and angry. She says she’s contacted some Arab-American advocacy groups to see what hell they might be able to raise about the situation.

For its part, Chase says it’s operating within the guidelines imposed on it by federal regulators. A Chase employee on the regional level told me, “It’s not the Patriot Act,” that led to Zaineb’s account termination.

Zaineb, acc’d’g to this Chase employee, “is a politically exposed person according to our regulators.” This person says Chase will not offer accounts to anybody with connections to “non-US people” working for foreign governments. This person says the practice is “due to the regulators.”

The person explains: “The regulations are so strenuous around these accounts that we never do business with these accounts anymore.”

Here’s Chase’s corporate line: “This decision is not a reflection on how these customers have handled their accounts, but rather a result of our focus on internal controls.”

Chase Bank is regulated by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a bureau of the Department of the Treasury. Parent JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a multinational banking and financial services holding company with assets of more than $2.5 trillion. That’s trillion. With a T. It is regulated by the Federal Reserve. The regulations my Chase source is talking about come from the OCC.

Chase Architecture

Zaineb Istrabadi’s experience with her ex-bank is not unique. Arab-Americans around the country are receiving termination notices from their banks. The Arab-American Civil Rights League has filed a class-action lawsuit against Ohio-based Huntington Bank in the US District Court in Detroit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations–Michigan appealed to the OCC to investigate Chase Bank‘s mass account terminations this past spring. The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida has asked the US Justice Department to sniff around for racial or religious discrimination in the national rash of account closures. Sofian Zakout, who heads American Muslims for Emergency and Relief Inc., had both his business and personal accounts terminated. A Minneapolis dentist begged TCF Bank to allow him to reopen his joint account with his wife but was rebuffed.

Much of this purging of Arab-Americans from banks’ customer rolls is due to various institutions’ interpretations of the OCC’s regulations. Here’s how Chase Bank interprets them:

Chase is no longer offering personal and business banking accounts to current or former senior non-U.S. officials, their immediate families, or close associates, given the significant and ongoing regulatory requirements to maintain the accounts. 

Regulatory guidance requires that banks perform specialized oversight and monitoring of these types of clients – requiring a significant amount of resources to support a relatively small group of customers. 

The above paragraphs arose in response to a June, 2013, guidance document issued by the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF describes itself this way:

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an independent inter-governmental body that develops and promotes policies to protect the global financial system against money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The FATF Recommendations are recognised as the global anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) standard.

Some 34 nations as well as the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council are members of the FATF. They are joined by dozens of associate members and observer organizations. It’s an all-star cast of players in the international monetary game.

In short, certain foreign gov’t officials and their kin are under suspicion. Their financial transactions must be strictly monitored. Such oversight costs time and money. The banks, ergo, figure it ain’t worth it.

Bye bye, Istrabadis — and countless other Arab-Americans. It’s not clear at this point if the same monitoring is required, say, of consuls and ambassadors from the United Kingdom or Monaco. In any case, Zaineb Istrabadi wonders how any foreign official working in the United States can pay her or his credit card bill. “How do they do their banking?” she says.

She only knows she and her brother are not doing their banking with Chase anymore.

Hot Air

Indian Affairs

Yet another one of our notable customers at the Book Corner is Indiana University’s Indian cultures and civilizations professor Sumit Ganguly. He and his family are insatiable readers, which makes them mahatmas indeed in our humble view.

Ganguly

Sumit Ganguly

Ganguly took over the mic for WFIU’s Profiles program this past Sunday. He spoke with Canadian/American/Indian author Shauna Singh Baldwin (podcast link), who also runs Milwaukee’s noted Safe House, a spy-themed restaurant that’s been allowing customers who give the high sign to pass through its secret passageway for nearly 50 years now.

Baldwin has written a number of books detailing the south Asia experience and Ganguly grilled her on said tomes. She had some fascinating insights into a developing consumer culture in the subcontinent. Some people even see their children as show-off-able possessions in some quarters of India, she says. Of course, Americans have become quite adept at turning their spawn into trophies.

India, natch, is an amazing place. One of every seven earthlings lives in that country and some of its national traditions and celebratory migrations include hundreds of millions of people at a crack. Throw an ear at Ganguly and Baldwin. Apparently, I’m not the only one who conducts a good interview in this town.

Al Fresco Professors

Speaking of Sumit Ganguly, he and IU Maurer School of Law professor Feisal Istrabadi sat in the cool sun outside chef Daniel Orr’s FARMbloomington restaurant Wednesday last week, enjoying lunch and, no doubt, solving the world’s problems. Now, if only the world would listen.

Istrabadi/UN

 Feisal Istrabadi At The UN

Istrabadi, an IU alum, served as Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations after that nation reorganized itself in the aftermath of the US invasion.

High Crimes

Feisal isn’t the only big shot Istrabadi in town. His sis, Zaineb, yet another Book Corner loyalist, is a senior lecturer in IU’s Near Eastern Languages & Cultures dept.

Istrabadi

Zaineb Istrabadi (Herald Times Photo)

She points out a tragic irony in all the hubbub over the shoot-down of that Malaysian airlines jet last week. She wrote (coyly) on Facebook this weekend:

Istrabadi Facebook

How quickly the rest of us forget. Back in 1988, long before the inventions of the printing press and TV, gunners aboard a US Navy guided missile cruiser shot down a fully loaded Iran Air jumbo jet. All 290 people on the plane perished.

For its part, Reagan Administration officials shrugged their shoulders and said, How were we s’posed to know it was a passenger jet? Considering the fact that an Airbus A300 is more than three times the size of a fighter jet, was following its normal daily flight path, and had identified itself as a civilian airliner, the US response in retrospect seems perhaps even more criminal than Vladmir Putin’s in recent days.

For his part, The Gipper never formally apologized to Iran for the loss of life and, in fact, both the entire crew and the air-warfare coordinator of the USS Vincennes received medals for meritorious service after their tour of duty in the Strait of Hormuz, from which the ship launched the surface-to-air missiles that downed the plane.

But wait, there’s more. Back in 1983 (guess who was Prez then, as well), our clients in far western Asia, the South Koreans, lost a fully-loaded 747 en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul. A Russian interceptor shot down Korean Air Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan, in Russian air space, resulting in 269 deaths. Reagan and his boys shook their fists at the Russians until strong evidence came to light that the flight had intentionally veered into Russian air space, most likely at our behest, just to see what them Russkies would do. Well, they shot the goddamned plane out of the sky; whadjya expect?

Knowing that the Russians have itchy trigger fingers and still sending a passenger jet over their turf is about as reckless as geopolitical actions get. In fact, this holy land (if the charges are true) turned hapless foreign civilians into cannon fodder without their knowledge.

So, let’s cut the bullshit about how appalled we are by Putin’s, Russia’s, and the Russian-backed separatists’ recent actions.

Saint Alive

I’ve blogged in other venues (don’t ask me for links, I’m too pressed for time to retrieve them right now) about what a plaster saint and a blowhard former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy is. He’s made a cottage career out of telling the world how it ought to behave. He’s written books for adults, young adults, and children, the central thesis of all of them his assertion that he possesses the secret of all that is right and good.

He’s back pontificating again. He told a reporter from the Tampa Tribune this weekend that he would have nothing to do with openly gay player Michael Sam if he were still in charge of a football team. Dungy said: “I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it. It’s not going to be totally smooth. Things will happen.”

Dungy

Tony Dungy Looks Heavenward

In other words, accepting a player who happens to love other men isn’t worth a football coach’s time or trouble. You know, just like it would have been too much of a hassle for a baseball manager to welcome Jackie Robinson to his team.

This, by the way, from a man who thought the whole Miami Dolphins flap over teammate bullying that led a player to retire prematurely would have been, really, no problem at all. Dungy was quoted as saying that the scandal that engulfed the Dolphins team last fall could have been a good thing. The team could have come together around it, he said. Dungy added he’d have used the situation as a teaching opportunity.

But a gay guy teammate? Nah. Too much trouble.

Clean Construction

My dear friends Sophia and Danny Wasik sold their first green house the other day. No, not greenhouse as in the place where you keep plants. That’s green house as in a domicile that’s energy efficient, uses recycled materials, and has minimal toxic chemical-laden features.

Dig the joint they built and sold up in Crystal Lake, a far northwest exurb of Chicago. It’s proof positive that people needn’t live in Stone Age hovels in order to minimize their carbon footprints. Or feetprint. You know what I mean.

The Wasiks have long dreamed of creating a biz wherein they’d build or flip retrofitted homes that meet or exceed current standards for eco-friendly construction. Now their operation, Terra Green, is making them dough while they advance the cause of good clean homebuilding.

Wasiks

The Wasiks, Surrounded By Green, Naturally

Here’s hoping more of our local Bloomington friends get the itch to get into the same racket in these parts. B-town is the crunchiest of crunchy locales; surely scads of savvy homebuilders here can make plenty o’coin building green homes.

Call or email Sophia and Dan for info on how to get such a biz off the ground.

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