Wachovia Bank Action Riles Muslim Activists

Local Muslim activists said yesterday that they will launch a public campaign against Wachovia Corp. to protest its refusal to explain why it closed the bank accounts of a Herndon-based Muslim social service organization.

The activists said they will hold a news conference Monday outside a Wachovia branch on North Capitol Street and ask people to contact the North Carolina-based bank to voice concern about its action. If the bank fails to explain its decision to close the accounts, they said they may take other steps, including street demonstrations and calls for a bank boycott.

"Hopefully, Wachovia will see that the community is very serious about this issue," said Corey P. Saylor, government affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"People in this community have a right to know why Wachovia closed this account," said Mahdi Bray, director of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation.

Wachovia spokesman Scott Silvestri wrote in an e-mail yesterday that "Wachovia is committed to conducting business and operations with the highest ethical standards and in full compliance with applicable laws. . . . It is also the company's long-standing policy not to comment on customer relationships."

The treasurer of the Muslim charity, the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help, said she suspects that Wachovia closed the accounts because the charity received a donation in April 2005 from a charity run by Muslim businessman M. Yaqub Mirza, whose Northern Virginia home and offices were raided by federal agents in 2002. Mirza has not been charged with a crime.

The $150,000 donation, intended as an endowment, came from an account at the same Wachovia branch where the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help had its accounts, said the treasurer, Margaret Farchtchi. The money was then invested in a subsidiary of Sterling Management Group Inc., a company run by Mirza, in an account at the same branch. This provided Wachovia with full transparency on the donation's movements, Farchtchi and another source close to the charity said.

Although $150,000 was an unusually large amount for the charity's three accounts, which normally held $60,000 to $70,000, the origin and purpose of the money could have been "easily explained" if bank officials had asked, Farchtchi said.

"It's just really irritating," Farchtchi said. "And all of this allusion to misguided activity . . . doesn't sit well with us. We've made extra efforts across the board as a Muslim organization to maintain transparency."

After the charity's accounts were closed in January, it opened new ones at Cardinal Bank.

Saylor, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that last year Wachovia also closed accounts held by five Northern Virginia Muslim organizations that were targeted in U.S. Customs raids in 2002, including Sterling Management. None has been charged with a crime.

The offices of the Foundation for Appropriate and Immediate Temporary Help were not raided and, as far as it knows, it "has never been the subject" of a federal investigation, Saylor wrote in an e-mail.

Formed in 1999, the charity provides aid to needy Northern Virginia residents of all faiths, including crisis counseling; emergency payments for rent, food and utilities; and support for victims of domestic violence.

In a Jan. 13 letter to a charity official, Jeraldine B. Davis, Wachovia senior vice president and assistant general counsel, denied that the bank "was motivated by discrimination." She wrote that certain account activity "was significantly different from that which Wachovia would expect to see in an account established for a charity."

David Caruso, a bank consultant who specializes in efforts to prevent money-laundering, said Wachovia's silence may stem from restrictions imposed by Congress after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Besides being required to report suspicious financial activities to the U.S. Treasury, banks are barred by law from telling anyone that they have made such reports.

Banks are not required to close accounts that raise suspicions, but monitoring them can become costly, Caruso said. As a result, he said, banks may "make a business decision" that keeping the account is not worth the cost.