Front organization

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as

terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations
. Front organizations can act for the parent group without the actions being attributed to the parent group, thereby allowing them to hide certain activities from the authorities or the public.

Front organizations that appear to be independent

parent company from legal liability. In international relations, a puppet state is a state
which acts as a front (or surrogate) for another state.

Intelligence agencies

Intelligence agencies use front organizations to provide "cover", plausible occupations and means of income, for their covert agents. These may include legitimate organizations, such as charity, religious or journalism organizations; or "

brass plate firms
" which exist solely to provide a plausible background story, occupation, and means of income.

Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a cover for its officers.

The airline Air America, an outgrowth of Civil Air Transport of the 1940s, and Southern Air Transport, ostensibly a civilian air charter company, were operated and wholly owned by the CIA, supposedly to provide humanitarian aid, but flew many combat support missions and supplied covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.[1] Other CIA-funded front groups have been used to spread American propaganda and influence during the Cold War, particularly in the Third World.[2] When intelligence agencies work through legitimate organizations, it can cause problems and increased risk for the workers of those organizations.[3] To prevent this, the CIA has had a 20-year policy (since 1976, per US Government sources) of not using Peace Corps members or US journalists for intelligence purposes.[4][5]

Another airline allegedly involved in intelligence operations was Russian

Russian program of biological weapons. This delivery channel encoded VOLNA ("wave") meant "delivering the material via an international flight of the Aeroflot airline in the pilots' cabin, where one of the pilots was a KGB officer".[6] At least two SVR agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens.[6]

When businessman

Viktor Ivanov, a high-ranking FSB official who is a close associate of Vladimir Putin
.

Law enforcement

The

FBI has acknowledged using at least thirteen front companies to conceal their use of aircraft to observe criminal activity in the United States, including:[9][10]

  • KQM Aviation
  • NBR Aviation
  • NG Research
  • PXW Services
  • FVX Research

Organized crime

Many

drug trafficking, smuggling, and prostitution. Tattoo parlors are often used as fronts for outlaw motorcycle clubs.[11]

Where brothels are illegal, criminal organizations set up front companies providing services such as a "massage parlor" or "sauna" to the point that "massage parlor" or "sauna" is thought as a synonym of brothel in these countries.[12]

Examples

A Colombian drug cartel, the Cali Cartel, in the past used Drogas La Rebaja, now a large national pharmacy store chain, as a front company in order to launder their drug trafficking earnings.[13]

The General Manager of the Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club in Cheektowaga, New York, is the international leader of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club: John Ermin. Many Outlaws MC members also work at the club. Authorities have referred to Pharaoh's as a hot spot for drug dealing and sex trafficking.[14] The club's owner is Peter G. Gerace Jr., the nephew of reputed Buffalo crime family boss Joseph A. Todaro Jr.[15] The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, themselves, have been designated by federal law enforcement as a criminal enterprise.[16]

In the early 2000s, the Black Mafia Family established the Atlanta-based record label BMF Entertainment as a front company to launder funds that were generated from the sale of cocaine.[17][18][19]

The boxing management company MTK Global is owned by the reputed Irish gang boss Daniel Kinahan. Heredia Boxing Management alleges that MTK Global was established as a front company to launder funds made from drug trafficking.[20]

During the year of 2019,

drug trafficking operations.[21][22][23]

Religion

Scientology

The

FBI's July 8, 1977 raids on the Church's offices (following discovery of the Church's Operation Snow White) turned up, among other documents, an undated memo entitled "PR General Categories of Data Needing Coding". This memo listed what it called "Secret PR Front Groups," which included the group APRL, "Alliance for the Preservation of Religious Liberty" (later renamed "Americans Preserving Religious Liberty").[25] The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) is considered by many[who?] to now be a front group for the Church of Scientology, which took the group over financially after bankrupting it in a series of lawsuits.[26][27]

Time identified several other fronts for Scientology, including: the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), The Way to Happiness Foundation, Applied Scholastics, the Concerned Businessmen's Association of America, and HealthMed Clinic.[28] Seven years later the Boston Herald showed how Narconon and World Literacy Crusade were also fronts for Scientology.[29] Other Scientology groups include

(ABLE).

Unification Church

Politics

In politics, a group may be called a front organization if it is perceived to be disingenuous in its control or goals or if it attempts to mask extremist views within a supposedly more moderate group. Some special interest groups engage in

grassroots movement
.

Apartheid government fronts

extra-judicial activities and the killing of anti-apartheid activists; these included[30]
the following:

Communist fronts

socialist parties) and the popular front
. Both the united front and the popular front usually disclose the groups that make up their coalitions.

United States

According to a list prepared in 1955 by the United States

Comintern set up no less than 82 front organizations in the United States in the 1930s and the 1940s.[35]

Soviet intelligence

infiltrated many peace movements in the West. In addition to the World Peace Council, important communist front organizations included the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the International Union of Students.[36] Richard Felix Staar has also suggested that these organizations were somewhat less important front organizations: Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation, Christian Peace Conference, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, International Federation of Resistance Movements, International Institute for Peace, International Organization of Journalists, Women's International Democratic Federation, and World Federation of Scientific Workers.[37] There were also numerous smaller organizations, affiliated with the above fronts such as Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.[38][39] Numerous peace conferences, congresses and festivals have been staged with support of those organizations.[40]

More recently, the

.

In 2014,

New York State that allow candidates to run on multiple ballot lines and to count all of their votes together. Critics of the party and of Cuomo have noted that there is an inherent level of deception involved in the party, as Cuomo is not a woman, the party has not favored women in its endorsement policies, and Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign fund is the primary source of revenue for the party's operations.[42]

Russia

In April 1991, the

August 1991 coup attempt
.

China

The united front is a political strategy and network of groups and key individuals that are influenced or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and used to advance its interests. It has traditionally been a popular front that has included eight legally-permitted political parties: the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, and other people's organizations.[46] Under Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, the united front and its targets of influence have expanded in size and scope.[47][48][49][50] The united front is managed primarily by but is not limited to the United Front Work Department (UFWD).

Other

An

Worker-Communist Party of Iraq.[51][52]

Banned paramilitary organizations

Banned paramilitary organizations sometimes use front groups to achieve a public face with which to raise funds, negotiate with opposition parties, recruit, and spread propaganda. For example, banned paramilitary organizations often have an affiliated political party that operates more openly, but those parties themselves often end up being banned. The parties may or may not be front organizations in the narrow sense (they have varying degrees of autonomy, and the relationships are usually something of an open secret) but are widely considered to be so, especially by their political opponents.

Examples are the relationship between the

vigilante front group, Direct Action Against Drugs
.

Both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries in Ireland during

when they carried out attacks against civilians, most of which were aimed at Catholic civilians.

During the Weimar Republic in Germany, the anti-Semitic and nationalist Organisation Consul reportedly had a front company named the Bavarian Wood Products Company.[54]

Corporate front organizations

Corporations from a wide variety of different industries, such as food, pharmaceutical and energy, set up front groups to advocate on their behalf.

Some pharmaceutical companies set up "patients' groups" as front organizations that pressure healthcare providers and legislators to adopt their products. For example, Biogen set up a campaign called Action for Access, which also claimed it was an independent organization and the voice of multiple sclerosis sufferers. People who visited the website and signed up for the campaign did not realise that these were not genuinely independent patient groups.

Over the past 15 years, increasing concerns about

Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) and Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) are two main groups that engage activists on behalf of Coca-Cola even though they were not intended to be publicly associated with Coca-Cola as a corporation. Research has revealed that the CCF, with a mission to "promote responsibility and protect consumer choices", uses both verbal and visual strategies to articulate obesity as "personal responsibility" to protect the industry from corporate responsibility.[55]

Tobacco companies frequently use front organizations and doctors to advocate their arguments about tobacco use although less openly and obviously than in the 1980s. The World Health Organization has charged that the tobacco industry funded seemingly-unbiased scientific organizations to undermine tobacco control measures and cited the International Life Sciences Institute in particular.[56] Another way to combat public health measures against tobacco is to use lobbying and campaign contributions. For example, RJ Reynolds, the current second-largest tobacco company in the United States, created a front group named Get Government Off Our Back ("GGOOB") in 1994 to fight federal regulation of tobacco. By hiding its involvement with tobacco industry, GGOOB avoided the tobacco industry reputation for misrepresenting evidence and drew big supports from both public and legislative aspects, successfully resolving the threats from wide-reaching tobacco regulations.[57]

A list of some alleged corporate front groups active in the US is maintained by the Multinational Monitor.[58] Some think tanks are corporate front groups. These organizations present themselves as research organizations, using phrases such as "...Institute for Research" in their names. Because their names suggest neutrality, they can present the commercial strategies of the corporations which sponsor them in a way which appears to be objective sociological or economical research rather than political lobbying.

Similarly the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has been criticised as a front organization for various industry bodies which seek to undermine regulation of their environmentally damaging activities under the guise of 'regulatory effectiveness'.[59]

Astroturfing

Astroturfing, a wordplay based on "

tort reform.[60]

See also

References

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External links