A Virginia doctor pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy charges involving an undeclared Swiss bank account under his control, the Justice Department announced.

According to a DOJ news release, Dr. Andrew Silva made false statements about an undeclared Zurich bank account to the Justice Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Silva, of Sterling, Va., is the most recent American to plead guilty to charges stemming from hidden money in Swiss bank accounts. On Feb. 4, Florida resident Jack Barouh pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return in an attempt to hide $10 million in offshore bank accounts with the Swiss banking giant UBS AG. Barouh was the seventh former client of UBS to plead guilty to a tax felony.

Silva’s account also was in Switzerland, but not with UBS. The DOJ news release did not name the bank where the account was held, but said that it was one world’s largest international banks headquartered in England, with offices in Switzerland and Virginia. UBS is headquartered in Zurich.

Whatever the bank’s identity, today’s news illustrates the Justice Department’s heightened efforts to go after offshore money.

“Today’s plea shows the continued efforts of the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute those citizens who use offshore accounts to hide income and assets,” John A. DiCicco, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, said in the release. “American taxpayers should rest assured that those who do not file accurate tax returns and who utilize offshore accounts to hide money will be investigated, and when appropriate, prosecuted and sent to jail.”

Silva inherited the undeclared Swiss account from his mother in 1997, the news release said. In 1999, a Zurich-based attorney instructed Silva not to keep any records of the account, and to keep it “hush.” The account was held under the name of a fake trust in Liechtenstein. The attorney also told Silva that he could transport or mail less than $10,000 in U.S. dollars without declaring it.

In September 2009, the bank told Silva that it was closing the account and that he had until the end of the year to withdraw the funds. According the news release, the Zurich attorney and a Swiss banker advising Silva refused to wire the money to the U.S. out of fear of leaving a trail for U.S. authorities. Instead, they advised Silva to smuggle hundreds of thousands of dollars into the U.S. in two individually wrapped “bricks” of cash.

From the release:

According to court documents, Silva admitted that on Nov. 23, 2009, upon his return to the United States, he falsely informed a U.S. Customs Inspector at Dulles International Airport that he had traveled to Switzerland to purchase diamonds. Further, he falsely stated to a U.S. Customs Inspector that he had not recently mailed any U.S. currency from Switzerland into the United States.

According to court documents, for the years 1997 through 2008, Silva made and subscribed false U.S. Individual Income Tax Returns, Forms 1040, that failed to report on the Schedules B attached to the returns that he had an interest in a financial account in a foreign country. Additionally, Silva failed to report the income he earned on his undeclared Swiss account on his tax returns.

According to court documents, from 1997 through 2008, Andrew Silva failed to file with the Department of the Treasury a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts on Form TD F 90-22.1 (FBAR) reporting his interest in his undeclared Swiss account that had an aggregate value of more than $10,000 at any time during a particular year.

Silva is free on a $50,000 bail pending sentencing, which is set for May 7, the release said. As part of a plea agreement, Silva agreed to forfeit to the government $211,200 that law enforcement officials seized from packages that he mailed from Switzerland. . He faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $500,000.

Along with DiCicco, Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Scot R. Rittenberg, deputy special agent in charge for ICE in Washington, Daniel S. Cortez, postal inspector in charge of the Washington Division, and IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Victor S. O. Song announced the plea in the news release.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg, Tax Division Senior Litigation Counsel Kevin M. Downing, and Tax Division Trial Attorneys Mark F. Daly and John E. Sullivan are prosecuting the case.

Attorney General Eric Holder amplified President Obama’s historic speech to the Muslim world in Cairo today with a pledge to vigorously enforce U.S. Muslims’ civil rights. What he didn’t mention: The DOJ is under heavy attack by Muslim-American activists after the Federal Bureau of Investigation cut off contacts with a prominent advocacy organization linked to Hamas.

In a statement issued this afternoon, Holder said:

“The President’s pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans.

The Justice Department also issued a memo detailing the dozens of cases it has prosecuted of civil rights violations against American Muslims. Read it here.

At the same time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been on the warpath against the FBI since January, when it was revealed that the Bureau had ended outreach contacts with the Muslim group over its leaders’ ties to Hamas. See our previous coverage here.

Since 9/11, the FBI had been working closely with CAIR to address civil rights violations against Muslim Americans. But evidence introduced in a major terrorism-support prosecution in Texas against officials of an Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, showed that CAIR’s founders were part of a Hamas support network. Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization. Holy Land’s two top officials were sentenced to 65 years in prison last week.

In addition, other Muslim groups are targeting Eastern District of Virginia Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg for his criminal contempt prosecution of a confessed Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporter who refused to comply with a grand jury subpoena.

Since news of the FBI cutoff, CAIR has made the Bureau its enemy number one. See this story in the Los Angeles Times about Muslims in California accusing the Bureau of infiltrating their mosques. Or this news release by CAIR claiming the FBI used financial inducement to get an informant to snitch on an alleged plot to bomb a New York synagogue.

FBI Director Rober Mueller had to address the controvery before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 25. He said the FBI thinks very carefully before sending informants into religious institutions:

“I will say that we do not focus on institutions, we focus on individuals. And I will say generally if there is evidence or information as to individual or individuals undertaking illegal activities in religious institutions, with appropriate high-level approval, we would undertake investigative activities, regardless of the religion.”

The DOJ backgrounder released Thursday made special note of cases where the DOJ intervened to allow Muslims to wear religious dress at schools and work. Examples include: allowing a Muslim schoolgirl in Oklahoma to wear a hijab (headscarf); allowing a guard at the New York Department of Corrections to wear a kufi (prayer cap); and allowing Newark, N.J., police officers to grow beards.

It also touted the Department’s efforts to fight discriminatory violence, including bringing federal charges against 48 defendants (resulting in 41 convictions) and helping state and local authorities bring more than 160 -crime prosecutions since 9/11.  One of the more violent cases was Dr. Robert Goldstein, who was sentenced to 151 months in prison for conspiring to bomb a mosque in Seminole, Florida.  The Department said it has also engaged with the Muslim community through meetings with organizations and the deployment of conflict resolution specialists.

A Muslim advocacy group filed an ethics complaint today against Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, in an apparent attempt to rachet up political pressure  in advance of a judge’s ruling on a criminal contempt case against a Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporter.

The complaint from the Muslim Political Affairs Council asks that Kromberg be removed from that and any other cases involving Muslims or Muslim-Americans. Kromberg in the past has made controversial remarks about Muslims.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema canceled a scheduled court hearing today in Alexandria on the contempt charges against former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who has refused to testify in a terrorism financing investigation in Virginia. Al-Arian has asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing the terms of a 2006 plea agreement exempt him from giving compelled grand jury testimony. In an order, Brinkema said the matter has already been “fully briefed” and that she will issue a written opinion “in the near future.” Her options now are to either dismiss the case or allow it to proceed to trial. Click here to see our previous coverage.

Supporters of Al-Arian held a rally in front of the Main Justice building this morning. A friend of the Al-Arian family, Tarek Al-Muhtasib, read from the complaint, addressed to new OPR head Mary Patrice Brown, asking her to “investigate discriminatory remarks” made by Kromberg, including a comment to a former Al-Arian defense attorney regarding Muslims:  “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset.” (See paragraph seven of the affidavit here).

Sara Sloan of the anti-war Answer Coalition told the small crowd outside Main Justice that Al-Arian is a “man of principle.” She added: “He is not going to take part in these continued persecutions of innocent people, as he has been persecuted.”

But an angry Florida federal judge in 2006 called Al-Arian a “master maniuplator” and said the “evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”  (Read the transcript here, starting on page 14). Al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of assisting members of the anti-Israel suicide bombing group after a Tampa jury in 2005 acquitted him of eight of 17 terrorism support counts. The jury failed to reach unanimous agreement on the other counts.We’ve ask the DOJ for comment and will update you later if we get it. Meanwhile, here are some more photos from today’s rally:

After the Ted Stevens debacle, the last thing the Department of Justice needs is another dismissal of a highly politicized indictment under allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

And so the stakes have been raised in a little-noticed, but fiercely fought, battle in the Eastern District of Virginia over a criminal contempt of court indictment against Sami Al-Arian, a confessed supporter of a Palestinian terror group. Judge Leonie Brinkema has scheduled a hearing on April 24 in Alexandria where she’ll likely decide whether to throw the contempt case out or let it proceed to trial. Each side is accusing the other of undermining the “integrity” of the U.S. justice system.

For background, see my previous posts here and here. The issue is whether prosecutors in the Middle District of Florida and the Counter-Terrorism Section at Main Justice used “winks and nods,” as Brinkema put it, to persuade the former University of South Florida professor to plead guilty in 2006 to one count of assisting Palestinian Islamic Jihad, then violated a verbal promise that Al-Arian wouldn’t have to testify before a grand jury in Virginia investigating terrorism financing networks. Islamic Jihad is a smaller rival to Hamas that has conducted numerous suicide bombings in Israel.

Through his attorney, celebrity George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, Al-Arian claims the terms of his 2006 plea agreement allowed him to ignore two later grand jury subpoenas in Virginia. The government disputes this. The agreement itself is silent on the issue of cooperation – neither ruling it in or out. But two district judges and two panels of appellate judges have already ruled against Al-Arian, who was previously charged with civil contempt.

Brinkema, however, has appeared skeptical of the criminal case, in part because prosecutors did not comply with her request to submit sworn affidavits about their understanding of the disputed agreement.

But in a government motion filed April 6, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg leans heavily on a key part of the public record he’d apparently overlooked in making his previous arguments: a transcript of Al-Arian’s 2006 plea hearing.

Under federal rules of criminal procedure, a judge must hold a hearing to examine whether a defendant is of sound mind and voluntarily pleading guilty. The judge must also explore thoroughly whether any “inducements” were offered to the defendant to plead guilty.

Federal Magistrate Judge Thomas McCoun III did so in Tampa. In the 2006 hearing, he repeatedly asked Al-Arian to state for the record if there were any side deals offered. Other than a promise from the government to deport him swiftly after time served, Al-Arian said: “I don’t recall anything else.” He made no mention of any deal to exempt him from testifying in other cases.

In its April 6 motion, the government argues courts must rely on the written terms of the plea agreement in such cases. The Al-Arian case was especially complicated, with “four defense attorneys engaged in negotiations with at least five government officials over a two month period in two different cities” (Tampa and Washington), the motion said.

Al-Arian’s lead defense attorney in Florida, William Moffitt, withdrew from the case before the plea agreement was finalized. But Al-Arian’s defense has based its defense on an affidavit Moffitt submitted saying he negotiated the deal in Florida and at Main Justice with then-Criminal Division chief Alice Fisher. Moffitt said it was his clear understanding that the agreement would “conclude all business” between Al-Arian and the government.

The government motion answers:

“It is unfortunate if a misunderstanding actually occurred in this case, and the defendant actually was advised by his attorneys that – in spite of the written terms of his agreement and the statements made to Judge McCoun in open court – his plea agreement barred this district from compelling his testimony.” It adds: “[E]nabling him now to avoid punishment for his criminal contempt would undermine the integrity of the Court.”

A former top official of a Palestinian terror group asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Monday to dismiss criminal contempt of court charges against him, arguing prosecutors have put the “integrity of the Court and legal process” at stake in trying to compel his testimony before a Virginia grand jury.

The defendant is Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pleaded guilty to one count of assisting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2006 after years of denying he had anything to do with the suicide-bombing group. Al-Arian claims the government violated his plea agreement in seeking his testimony about an Islamic think tank in Virginia under investigation for terrorism financing.

The contempt case pits celebrity George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, Al-Arian’s lawyer and an MSNBC legal commentator, against an aggressive Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gordon Kromberg, who has been criticized for making inflammatory statements about Muslims.

The now-disputed 2006 plea agreement was negotiated at the highest levels of Main Justice, roping in then-Criminal Division chief Alice Fisher. The chief negotiator was Cherie Krigsman, then a trial attorney with the Counter-Terrorism section in Washington and now an AUSA in Tampa.

Brinkema in recent court hearings in Alexandria has repeatedly questioned why prosecutors haven’t complied with her request to submit affidavits clarifying their understanding of the 2006 plea agreement. She has called the lack of affidavits a “hole in the case” and suggested prosecutors may have violated Al-Arian’s rights under Santobello v. New York, a 1971 Supreme Court decision that says the government is bound to honor even even unwritten promises made during plea negotiations.

As a journalist who covered the Al-Arian saga for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, I will cut to the chase for you: No, prosecutors probably did not violate his 2006 plea agreement. But the government’s case is so muddled at this point it will still probably lose.

Al-Arian knows Americans well. He’s taken advantage of the fact we’re bred to recoil at abuse of power by  government. And well we should. But Americans also have an obligation not to be dumb. Have Al-Arian’s defenders actually read the public record? If they have, are they saying it’s okay to raise money from Iran for a group that advanced its political goals by blowing people up at bus stops?

Jihad in America

In 1994, a controversial former CNN journalist named Steve Emerson produced a documentary for PBS called “Jihad in America.” (Full disclosure: I have written for Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism Web site). Using public source material, the documentary linked Al-Arian to Islamic Jihad, a smaller rival to Hamas. Islamic Jihad waged a deadly campaign of suicide bombings in an attempt to derail the 1994 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians. In 1995 President Clinton issued an executive order banning assistance to the group.

The documentary produced a bitter split in the Tampa Bay community. Emerson had a reputation as a pro-Israel advocate. His journalism was solid, but Al-Arian deftly denounced his documentary as “a deliberate attempt to defame and distort the cause of Muslim organizations in the United States.” Al-Arian’s supporters, including many faculty at the University of South Florida, saw the Palestinian as the victim of a McCarthyist witch hunt for his political and religious views.

Others couldn’t believe anyone was so naïve. The documentary and subsequent news reports showed that an Islamic think tank Al-Arian ran in Tampa had employed the founder of Islamic Jihad, Fathi Shikaki. Al-Arian had published a magazine for Islamic Jihad. He’d been host in Tampa in the early 1990s to Islamist icons like the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, who at the time was running a pre-cursor organization to Al-Qaeda; and Hassan al-Turabi, the leader of Sudan who was then harboring Osama bin Laden.

In October 1995, Shikaki was assassinated in Malta. Another employee of Al-Arian’s think tank, Ramadan Shallah, suddenly turned up in Syria as the new leader of Islamic Jihad. Questioned by local reporters, Al-Arian said he’d had no idea that Shallah was connected to Islamic Jihad. In November 1995, the FBI raided Al-Arian’s home and think tank.

The criminal case bumbled along without charges for years.  Al-Arian’s supporters said the lack of charges showed the case was weak. And the emotional debate over his guilt or innocence split along predictable liberal-conservative ideological lines, muddling the truth. But unknown to everyone — even the FBI’s own criminal investigators — the national security side of the Bureau had been secretly wiretapping Al-Arian’s phones for years, under FISA warrants.

The “wall” between intelligence gathering and criminal investigations, however, kept that key wiretap evidence out of the public debate and the courts.

A “Master Manipulator”

Then came 9/11. Congress quickly passed the Patriot Act, and the “wall” came down. The wiretaps were now admissible as evidence. In 2005 the government brought Al-Arian to trial on charges of material support for terrorism.

At trial, video tapes seized in the 1995 raid showed Al-Arian at Islamic conferences raising money for Islamic Jihad. “God damn America!” Al-Arian said in Arabic, at one of the conferences, and“Death to Israel!” He called Jews the “sons of monkeys and pigs.”

The previously secret national security wiretaps revealed that Al-Arian had been an intermediary between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran, the group’s main funder. Evidence showed he’d been the secretary of Islamic Jihad and on its “shura” council of leaders.

But his Florida attorneys, William Moffitt and Linda Moreno, argued he was being targeted for his political views in violation of his constitutional free speech rights. In a major blow to the government, the jury acquitted him on eight of 17 counts and did not agree on the others.

In 2006, rather than face the possibility of a re-trial, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty in the Middle District of Florida to one count of helping Islamic Jihad members secure U.S. visas. Moffitt went to Washington to finalize the plea agreement, meeting with Fisher in the Criminal Division, according to an affidavit Moffitt submitted.

Moffitt said he insisted that prosecutors not include any language in the plea agreement requiring Al-Arian’s cooperation with the government in the future. The final agreement ended up silent on the issue – ruling cooperation neither in or nor out. This created the ambiguity that is now at issue before Judge Brinkema.

Not in dispute is that the government promised to help expedite Al-Arian’s deportation to the Middle East in exchange for the guilty plea. Prosecutors expected the Florida trial judge, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody, to sentence the legal U.S. resident to essentially time served, allowing Al-Arian’s swift deportation.

But an angry Judge Moody upended those plans. The Clinton-appointed judge slammed Al-Arian as a “master manipulator” at his sentencing hearing, and unexpectedly gave him maximum prison time, delaying his deportation. “The evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” Moody told him at sentencing. He called Al-Arian a liar, a hypocrite, immoral, callous to human suffering and basically an all around despicable character. I’m not exaggerating. Read the transcript yourself, starting at page 14.

While Al-Arian sat in prison, an acting deputy assistant attorney general at Main Justice, Barry Sabin, approved a subpoena from Kromberg in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking his testimony before a grand jury investigating terrorism financing. Al-Arian refused to testify, despite a grant of immunity from prosecution. He said the plea agreement exempted him from cooperation.

The government disagreed. U.S. District Judge Gerald Lee in the Eastern District of Virginia found Al-Arian in civil contempt in 2007. Then last year, Al-Arian was charged with criminal contempt.

They Can Kill Each Other During Ramadan

But there were credibility problems looming for the government. An Al-Arian defense attorney, Jack Fernandez of Zuckerman

Gordon Kromberg

Spaeder in Tampa, had filed a 2006 affidavit accusing Kromberg of bias against Muslims.

Fernandez said that in denying a request that Al-Arian’s transfer to custody in Virginia be delayed because of the Islamic holiday Ramadan, Kromberg told him: “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset.” Fernandez said in the affidavit he took “they” to mean Muslims. (See paragraph 7).

Then, the criminal contempt case came before Judge Brinkema. In an August 2008 hearing, she admonished Kromberg for saying a court-ordered release of Al-Arian into the custody of his daughter was risky, because “in this particular culture” a woman could not prevent her father from fleeing. She also questioned whether Kromberg had violated Al-Arian’s constitutional rights by changing standard immunity order language.

But in January of this year, Brinkema ruled that the criminal contempt trial could proceed, dealing a blow to the defense. Click here to read our report about that decision.

The tide again turned against the government in a series of hearings in February and March. Turley said it was Al-Arian’s clear understanding in his plea negotiations that he would not be required to provide any further cooperation with the government. Even if that promise wasn’t written into the agreement, the government still had to honor it under the Santobello decision, Turley argued.

Jonathan Turley

Turley submitted affidavits from Al-Arian’s original defense attorneys, Moffitt and Moreno. Moffitt said non-cooperation had been “the most significant issue” for Al-Arian in the negotiations, and he agreed to plead guilty only because prosecutors agreed to remove standard cooperation language from the agreement.

Because this was now an essentially he-said/she-said argument, Brinkema asked Kromberg to provide affidavits from the Middle District of Florida prosecutors about their understanding of the deal. “I have evidence under the penalty of perjury from defense counsel, and I have no evidence, I have only representations from the United States,” Brinkema said in a Feb. 20 hearing.

She said there was a “significant cloud over this criminal prosecution” because the Counter-Terrorism section at Main Justice had been involved in both the plea negotiations and the approval of the immunity order to compel testimony in Virgnia.

“I think the integrity of the Justice Department and the integrity of the criminal justice plea bargaining process is too significant to just let it die on the vine, given the nature of the record before this Court,” Brinkema answered.

Kromberg argued in subsequent filings that prosecutor affidavits weren’t necessary because Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek in Tampa had already said in a previous court hearing the agreement didn’t exempt Al-Arian from compelled testimony. But Kromberg also revealed that the Middle District prosecutors had objected to his attempt to subpoena Al-Arian.

Kromberg explained the objections as stemming from the Middle District prosecutors’ desire that nothing interfere with their promise to deport Al-Arian swiftly. Once Judge Moody hit him with the longer-than-expected sentence, Kromberg said, the situation changed, because Al-Arian was suddenly stuck in prison – and thus available to testify.

But Turley pounced. He called the revelation “new evidence” that changed the game. The government’s conduct “doesn’t just shock the conscience. It makes it impossible for prosecutors and defense attorneys to work,” Turley said in a March 9 hearing.

The government now has until April 6 to answer Al-Arian’s motion to dismiss.

No Mention of Any Deal

So, why don’t I believe Al-Arian had an implied promise of exemption from any future grand jury testimony? The defendant’s long record of dissembling aside, I know that the prosecutors in 2006 were just anxious to get the plea deal done after their embarrassing failure to win a conviction at trial. I haven’t talked to any of them about it, but I suspect they saw removal of any cooperation clause as simply a way to get the deal signed. If they had truly intended to exempt Al-Arian from any future testimony, wouldn’t they have expressly written that into the deal?

And the other reason I tend to believe the government, despite all the problems with its case, is that Al-Arian himself, when he had a chance to put this alleged side deal on the public record, didn’t mention it at all.

In 2006, a federal Magistrate Judge in Tampa, Thomas B. McCoun III, repeatedly questioned Al-Arian about any “inducements” or side deals he had with prosecutors outside the written agreement that convinced him to plead guilty. Al-Arian raised only one: The government had agreed to expedite his deportation.

Here’s just one of several such exchanges from the transcript:

McCoun: “Beyond the discussions and the efforts that are apparently ongoing with regards to deportation, have there been any other promises made to you that are an inducement in your mind to entering a guilty plea? If so, we need to put them on the record.”

Al-Arian: “I don’t recall anything else.”