Representatives of Western Union say their transfer agencies have stalled or halted thousands of cash deliveries over terrorist concerns because the sender or receiver has an "Arab-sounding" name. Snip from AP story:
…Pakistani Qadir Khan said Western Union blocked his attempt this month to wire money to his brother Mohammed for a cataract operation. "Every Mohammed is a terrorist now?" Khan asked.
Dubai-based representatives from Western Union Financial Services, an American company based in Colorado, and Minnesota-based MoneyGram International said their clerks are simply following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed a few hours. Some are blocked entirely.
In many cases, would-be customers like Maruthayil simply find another way to send the funds – often through informal exchanges with less stringent monitoring.
Reader comment: Philbert says,
mr. Qadir Khan's money transfer is more likely to have been stalled because of his own name, as his namesake is the 'father of the Pakistani Muslim Nuclear Bomb'
Abdul Qadir Khan worked for a Dutch Research company specialized in nuclear studies and heavily involved in European Nuclear programmes. As such he smuggled lots of sensitive information into his motherland which laid the basis of the Pakistani nuclear programme. Link
