Terror

Joshua Stanton
E. 1997–2004: Terrorist Financing
On September 30, 2004, a grand jury of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
indicted Sean Garland, the Chief of Staff of the Real Irish Republican Army (IRA), 179 a Marxist IRA
splinter group that the U.S. State Department had designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
on May 16, 2001. 180 The charges included conspiracy, dealing in counterfeit obligations or
securities, and counterfeit acts committed outside the United States. 181 Garland was not indicted
for providing material support to a terrorist organization. 182
According to the indictment, starting in 1997 or earlier, and until as recently as 2004, Garland
and several co-conspirators smuggled high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency made in North
Korea, commonly known as “supernotes,” into Ireland and the United Kingdom. 183 Garland and
his associates obtained the supernotes from North Korean embassies in third countries, and
laundered them for a profit. The indictment quotes two of Garland’s co-conspirators as telling a
third person that the proceeds of the sale “all go[es] back into the organization.”
According to the indictment, the detection of supernotes briefly caused both Irish and Thai
banks to cease accepting $100 notes. The U.S. Government asked the Irish Government to
extradite Mr. Garland for trial in the United States, but in January 2012, a Justice of the High
Court of Ireland denied the request. 184 The U.S. Government did not appeal the decision.
179 Also known as the Official IRA, or the Red IRA.
180 U.S. Department of State, “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm.
181 Grand Jury Indictment, United States v. Garland, Case No. 1:05-cr-00185 (RMC) (D.D.C. May 19, 2005).
182 For more background information on North Korea’s counterfeiting of U.S. currency, see Stephen Mihm, “No
Ordinary Counterfeit,” The New York Times, 23 July 2006; David Rose, “North Korea’s Dollar Store,” September 2009,
Vanity Fair; Raphael F. Perl and Dick K. Nanto, “North Korean Counterfeiting of U.S. Currency,” CRS Report for Congress
RL33324 (17 January 2007); and Raphael F. Perl, “Drug Trafficking and North Korea: Issues for U.S. Policy,” CRS Report
for Congress RL32167 (25 January 2007). In 2008, a federal court in Las Vegas convicted Chen Chiang Liu of conspiring
to smuggle supernotes into the United States (Adrienne Packer, “Conviction in counterfeit currency case,” Las Vegas
Review-Journal, 18 September 2008). In April 2013, David Cohen, the Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and
Financial Intelligence, said, “We believe North Korea is continuing to try to pass a supernote into the international
financial system” (“U.S. Pursuing North Korean Leader’s Secret Money, Official Says,” Voice of America, 13 April 2013).
183 Grand Jury Indictment, United States v. Garland, Case No. 1:05-cr-00185 (RMC), 17 (D.D.C. May 19, 2005).
184 “Sean Garland will not be extradited to US,” RTE News, 07 March 2012.
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