Dar Al Tawakul General LLC is also located at 2200 E Franklin Ave, # 204.
Garad Nor, the owner of the destroyed building on Cedar Avenue South, acknowledged his place on Treasury’s list of interdicted persons and companies. According to an article published in 2012 by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
“Nor, who also goes by the name Garad Jama, was in Dubai the day he learned through CNN that his name was listed among 62 individuals and organizations that the U.S. government said had helped fund Osama bin Laden.”
Why might Garad K. Nor have been in Dubai, of all places?
Here’s a possible reason:
Mr. Nor works for Tawakal Express, an international hawala money-transfer company headquartered in Dubai. Tawakal Express is a globe-spanning enterprise. It’s hard to tell how many outlets it has all over the world, but according to its search page for agents, the company has offices in the following countries:
- Australia
- Austria
- Canada
- Denmark
- Djibouti
- Ethiopia
- Finland
- Ireland
- Kenya
- New Zealand
- Norway
- SOM [Somalia]
- South Sudan
- Sweden
- UAE
- Uganda
- UK
- USA
A look at the listing for the USA reveals that Tawakal Express does business in these states (notice that the list is not in alphabetical order, and that Minnesota comes first):
- Minnesota
- Washington
- Arizona
- Nebraska
- Iowa
- Georgia
- Connecticut
- Colorado
- Ohio
- Maine
- Missouri
Click on “Minnesota” and then choose Minneapolis. The page of results is too long to reproduce here, but you may notice two locations on the same side of Cedar Avenue as the destroyed building, one a block to the north, and the other a block to the south.
Since being listed as a terrorism-associate by the U.S. Treasury and the European Commission, Garad K. Nor has managed to clear his name. A press release issued in 2012 says the President and CEO of Tawakal Money Express successfully completed a four-day training workshop (teleconferenced from Somalia) for its staff and agents regarding procedures for complying with anti-money laundering regulations in the USA. Tawakal Money Express, a franchise of the Tawakal Express global enterprise, is located at… 2200 E Franklin Ave, #204.
To reiterate: that’s the same location as the offices of Wadani Properties, the company that owned and managed the exploded building at 514 Cedar Avenue South.
As a final irony, the Minnesota Republican Party has just moved its headquarters to the same address, 2200 E Franklin, Suite #201.
Do the good citizens of Minneapolis know about this tangled nexus of mischief and skullduggery in their midst?
If they did, would they even care?
For more information on the explosion and fire in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, on New Year’s Day 2014, see the Cedar-Riverside Explosion Archives.
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