How the PKK is Funded

[Hakan]

PKK : FUNDING OPERATIONS AND METHODS​

STRATFOR
Robert Fragnito

Key Objectives and Sources of Revenue:

• PKK Budget Estimated at $86 Million.
• PKK’s objective is to create international pressure and antipathy against Turkey.
• PKK uses heroin production and trafficking to support its acts of terror (1996 INCS).
• Engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering activities and is well-established in the production of almost all kinds of opium products and their smuggling.Other sources of revenue of the PKK as extortion, robbery and counterfeiting.
• The revenues used for purchasing firearms, munitions and other equipment used by the terrorists.
• Narcotics smuggling therefore constitutes a major part of the PKK's financial apparatus, alongside extortion, blackmailing, robbery, arms smuggling and illicit labor trafficking.
• The revenues gained from illicit drug dealings and marketing are channeled to funding its arms purchases, which is required to sustain its terrorist activities.
Individuals:
• Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, as headof the Russian External Intelligence Service (SVR), has long been a PKK supporter, and once persuaded Saddam Hussein to allow the PKK to use Iraqi territory.] (American Foreign Policy Council 1996)
• Danielle Mitterand, the radical widow of the former French president, from addressing Ocalan as "Dear President Ocalan" in a 1998 letter, which ended "[R]est assured, Abdullah, that I am committed to be beside you in the bid for peace. Sincerely Iran has provided PKK with supplies in the form of weapons and funds.

Greece:

• Greek army general Dimitris Matafias has paid numerous visits and offered assistance.

• As of March 1999, allegedly, Greece had supplied PKK with 20,000 AK-47's and 30 Stinger missiles.

• Greek Cyprus also supported PKK by allowing its leaders to travel freely by providing them with passports. Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of PKK, has been caught with a Cypriot passport to the name of Mavros Lazaros.

• These could be potentially true seeing that Greece was accused of sponsoring the PKK in Greece for training during the 1990s.

Key Documents:

The March 1997 issue of "The Geopolitical Drug Dispatch," a monthly report prepared by the " Observatoire Geopolitique Des Drogues.”

International Narcotics Control Strategy (INCS)

Dr. François Haut of the Paris Institute of Criminology in Brussels on 25 April 1997.

UN International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) in Beirut from 29 June to 3 July 1998, noted that "there were clear linkages between some narco-terrorist organizations, for example, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and other organized transnational criminal groups."

"Political Violence and Narco-Trafficking", a booklet published by the Paris Institute of Criminology in October 1996, PKK's narcotics network and its functioning are detailed.

1995 report prepared by the Drug Enforcement Agency of the US Department of Justice.

THE NEXUS AMONG TERRORISTS, NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS, WEAPONS PROLIFERATORS, AND ORGANIZED CRIME NETWORKS IN WESTERN EUROPE: A Study Prepared by the Federal Research Division,Library of Congress under an Interagency Agreement with the United States Government December 2002

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PKK By Michael RaduSource: Orbis, Winter2001, Vol. 45 Issue 1, p47, 17phttp://www.oranim.ac.il/courses/meast/extra/RISE%20AND%20FALL%20THE%20PKK.htm

The PKK'S Role in International Drug Trafficking​

Fuss, a report prepared by the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) in 1992 linked the PKK to drug and concluded that nearly 178 Kurdish organizations were suspected of illegal drug trade involvement. Second, INTERPOL's chief narcotics officer Iqbal Hussain Rizvi stated that the PKK was also heavily evolved m drug trafficking as a means to support the Kurdish revolt in Turkey. Rizvi further specified the routes for the Illegal drugs confirming that Kurdish areas were sites for heroin refining factories. Third, in 1994 Germany's Chief Prosecutor maintained that 80"/o of the drugs seized in Europe were linked to the PKK and that money acquired through illegal drug trafficking was used to purchase arms. Furthermore, the Italian police also acknowledged the existence of a PKK team conducting transportation of heroin to Italy and arms to Turkey. Fourth, admissions by some of the individuals arrested for drug dealing confirm the PKK role in this illicit money-producing business. For example, a Kurdish smuggler caught in 1991 admitted to transporting 300 kilograms of heroin for the PKK over a three-year period during the late 1980s.

These incidents strongly indicate the PKK's Involvement in illegal drug trafficking and link the group to drug trading as early as 1984 (the same year the PKK officially started its separatist terrorism). Not only Is the PKK involved in the transportation of Illegal drugs, but over the years, it has also extended its role into production and marketing as well. In short, the PKK has grown into a full-service business coordinating the production, use, and transportation of Illegal drugs, particularly in Western Europe.

According to a report by the British National Service of Criminal intelligence, the PKK acquired about $75 million from drug smuggling In Europe In 1993. Further, in 1994 PKK members were arrested by Turkish authorities while attempting to smuggle 1.5 tons of hashish Into Turkey from one of Turkey's neighboring countries.

Due to its extensive drug smuggling operations, the PKK has remained well-armed. In 1994 alone, Turkish security forces seized from the PKK a total of 3,075 weapons and various instruments including 767,000'rounds of ammunition; 399 rocket launchers; 3,419 rockets; 4,415 hand grenades; 31 mortars;1,964 mortar bombs; and 131 radios.

MFA - V. The PKK'S Role in International Drug Trafficking

Treasury Sanctions Supporters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Tied to Drug Trafficking in Europe
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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today announced the designation of Moldovan-based individuals Zeyneddin Geleri, Cerkez Akbulut (a.k.a. Cernit Murat), and Omer Boztepe as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs) for acting for or on behalf of the PKK, also known as Kurdistan Workers Party or Kongra-Gel. OFAC also designated Omer Geleri and three Romanian-based companies due to their ties and or activities related to Zeyneddin Geleri.Today’s action represents the first designation under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act) of entities that are owned or controlled by individuals acting for the PKK in Europe. As a result of this action, U.S. persons are prohibited from conducting financial or commercial transactions with the designees and any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.

Treasury Sanctions Supporters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Tied to Drug Trafficking in Europe

DISRUPTING TERRORIST NETWORKS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PKK TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
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Among other forms of fund raising, the PKK is known to use extortion as a way to generate funds. Through coercion, violence, or the threat of violence the PKK extorts members of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe who do not voluntarily donate to the terrorist organization.275 In 2005, the Belgian police arrested several suspects who were tied to the PKK’s financing activities. Authorities quickly found that “the suspects were collecting ‘tax’ from their fellow countrymen” to support the PKK.276 The “PKK also taxes ethnic Kurdish drug traffickers in Western Europe.”277 Other accounts of PKK extortion in Europe include a protection racket in Northern London where restaurants pay “insurance fees,” Turkish businessman of Kurdish origin and various other companies in Belgium that are extorted on a monthly basis, and similar extortion activities in North Rhineland, Westphalia, and Saxony in Germany.278 The PKK also resorts to extortion in order to generate funds in Turkey from Turkish Kurds who live in the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey.279 Other sources state that the PKK extorts money from firms and contractors that are hired by the Turkish government for contracts, travel agencies that work in the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey, local government offices through coercion and threat of violence, families who obey the law and conscript their children, and ethnic Kurdish businessmen and hotel owners.

Full report is here: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a536525.pdf

More Sources:

http://www.strategicoutlook.org/publications/Terrorism_and_Its_Financial_Sources.pdf

PKK in heart of drug trafficking- U.S. official

2013 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR)

Department of State Washington File: Text: Terrorist Groups Increasingly Linked to Drugs, Officials Say

PressTV - Turkish security forces seize 20-ton PKK marijuana stash

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Turkey seizes PKK marijuana stash in major crackdown - LOCAL

Syria supporting PKK, says intelligence report - POLITICS

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[Steve781]

Quite often groups like this lose their original political motivation and become more concerned with making money through drugs and protection rackets than anything else. Happened to the IRA, ETA, FARC etc.

 

[Hakan]

I wonder where pyd gets its funding ?

 

[T-123456]

I wonder where pyd gets its funding ?

Probably from the PKK,KRG,Assad and maybe Iran(since they fight a common enemy).