Wall Street Journal
January 18, 2013
Chad Bray
Three-and-a-half years ago, a federal judge in Brooklyn found herself in an rare situation in a long-running document dispute. She crafted a unique solution.
Arab Bank PLC, a Jordan-based financial institution, had refused for years to provide certain customer records in a lawsuit brought families of victims killed or injured in terrorist attacks overseas because the bank said doing so would violate foreign bank secrecy laws.
The lawsuit claimed the bank knowingly provided financial services to terrorist groups and should be held financially liable for the actions of those groups.
It’s one of several lawsuits that have sprung up in the last decade in federal courts in the U.S. as survivors of terrorist attacks in the Middle East and their heirs seek to recoup financial compensation from banks or other entities that allegedly facilitate the movement of money to finance groups labeled as terrorists organizations by the U.S.
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