Front organization


A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization that acts 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.

Intelligence agencies

The term was popularized by Senator Joe McCarthy, as he described various communist activities.
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 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. Other CIA-funded front groups have been used to spread American propaganda and influence during the Cold War, particularly in the Third World.
When intelligence agencies work through legitimate organizations, it can cause problems and increased risk for the workers of those organizations. To prevent this, the CIA has had a 20-year policy of not using Peace Corps members or US journalists for intelligence purposes.
Another airline allegedly involved in intelligence operations was Russian Aeroflot that worked in a close coordination with KGB, SVR and GRU. The company conducted forcible "evacuations" of Soviet citizens from foreign countries back to the USSR. People whose loyalty was questioned were drugged and delivered unconscious by Aeroflot planes, assisted by the company KGB personnel, according to former GRU officer Victor Suvorov. In the 1980s and 1990s, specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses stolen from Western laboratories were delivered by Aeroflot to support the Russian program of biological weapons. This delivery channel encoded VOLNA 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". At least two SVR agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens.
When businessman Nikolai Glushkov was appointed as a top manager of Aeroflot in 1996, he found that the airline company worked as a "cash cow to support international spying operations" according to Alex Goldfarb: 3,000 people out of the total workforce of 14,000 in Aeroflot were FSB, SVR, or GRU officers. All proceeds from ticket sales were distributed to 352 foreign bank accounts that could not be controlled by the Aeroflot administration. Glushkov closed all these accounts and channeled the money to an accounting center called Andava in Switzerland. He also sent a bill and wrote a letter to SVR director Yevgeni Primakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov asking them to pay salaries of their intelligence officers in Aeroflot in 1996. Glushkov was imprisoned in 2000 on charges of illegally channeling money through Andava. Since 2004 the company is controlled by 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:
  • KQM Aviation
  • NBR Aviation
  • NG Research
  • PXW Services
  • FVX Research

    Organized crime

Many organized crime operations have substantial legitimate businesses, such as licensed gambling houses, building construction companies, hair salons and karaoke bars, engineering firms, restaurants and bars, billiard clubs, trash hauling services, or dock loading enterprises. These front companies enable these criminal organizations to launder their income from illegal activities. As well, the front companies provide plausible cover for illegal activities such as illegal gambling, extortion, drug trafficking, smuggling, and prostitution. Tattoo parlors are often used as fronts for outlaw motorcycle clubs.
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.

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.
The General Manager of the Pharaoh's Gentlemen's Club in Cheektowaga, New York, was 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. The club's owner was Peter G. Gerace Jr., the nephew of reputed Buffalo crime family boss Joseph A. Todaro Jr. The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, themselves, have been designated by federal law enforcement as a criminal enterprise.
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.
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.
During the year of 2019, ACT Police shut down the Lakeside Tattoo Parlour in Belconnen on the grounds of it being allegedly used to launder cash for the notorious outlaw motorcycle gang, Comanchero Motorcycle Club. The money laundered through the tattoo parlor allegedly came from the club's drug trafficking operations.

Religion

Scientology

The Church of Scientology uses front groups either to promote its interests in politics, to make its group seem more legitimate, and to recruit. The FBI's July 8, 1977 raids on the Church's offices 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". The Cult Awareness Network is considered by many 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.
Time identified several other fronts for Scientology, including: the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, The Way to Happiness Foundation, Applied Scholastics, the Concerned Businessmen's Association of America, and HealthMed Clinic. Seven years later the Boston Herald showed how Narconon and World Literacy Crusade were also fronts for Scientology.
Other Scientology groups include Downtown Medical, Criminon and the Association for Better Living and Education.

Unification Church

Politics

Apartheid government fronts

's apartheid-era government used numerous front organizations to influence world opinion and to undertake extra-judicial activities and the killing of anti-apartheid activists; these included the following:
  • The Citizen – funded secretly by the government and was intended to challenge the liberal Rand Daily Mail, contributing to the political ruin of John Vorster and Connie Mulder
  • Civil Cooperation Bureau – a covert, special forces organization that harassed, seriously injured, and eliminated anti-apartheid activists
  • Federal Independent Democratic Alliance – a conservative black group.
  • International Freedom Foundation – Washington-based mechanism to combat sanctions and support Jonas Savimbi and UNITA
  • Jeugkrag – or Youth for South Africa, led by Marthinus van Schalkwyk as a short-lived Afrikaner youth group, surreptitiously funded by the Military Intelligence's Project Essay
  • National Student Federation – led by Russell Crystal, intended to challenge NUSAS
  • Roodeplaat Research Laboratories – Led by Daan Goosen, the main research facility of Project Coast
  • Taussig Familienstiftung, or Taussig Family Trust - a Liechtenstein conduit for secret government transactions
  • Veterans for Victory – consisting of national servicemen, a countermeasure to the End Conscription Campaign, which was allied to the United Democratic Front

    Communist fronts

parties have sometimes used front organizations to attract support from those who do not fully agree with the party's ideology but agree with certain aspects of it. The front organization often obscures its provenance and may often be a tool for recruitment. Other Marxists often describe front organizations as opportunist. The concept of a front organization should be distinguished from the united front 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 Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the Comintern set up no less than 82 front organizations in the United States in the 1930s and the 1940s.
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. 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. There were also numerous smaller organizations, affiliated with the above fronts such as Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Numerous peace conferences, congresses and festivals have been staged with support of those organizations.
More recently, the Workers' World Party set up an anti-war front group, International ANSWER. Similarly, Unite Against Fascism, the Anti-Nazi League, the Stop the War Coalition and Respect – The Unity Coalition are all criticised as being fronts for the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.