It is an axiom within the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities that "following the money" is the key to disrupting and dismantling criminal organizations. The same is true when it comes to terrorist networks. Officials in the United States and abroad now realize that fighting terrorism financing (and its corollary, money laundering) is one of the best ways to prevent future catastrophic attacks. As a new generation of public servants learns the ropes and begins to contribute to the war on terror, the proven tactic of following money trails will become more central than ever. At the same time, this task is becoming increasingly complex due to our adversaries' skill in avoiding traditional financial countermeasures. Law enforcement and intelligence officials must learn to understand the sometimes obscure methodologies that terrorist organizations use to raise, move, and store money-whether these activities stem from the Usama bin Ladens of the world, rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea, or members of Hizbollah, Hamas, or a host of other like-minded organizations.
In declaring the war against terrorism President George W. Bush also declared war on the financing of terrorism. In this book, bankers, regulators and academics pose a variety of questions from their individual perspectives: What can financial institutions realistically contribute to the suppression of terrorist financing? Can individual rights be protected in these circumstances? These questions are analyzed by experts who come up with some thought-provoking answers.
The success of counterterrorism finance strategies in reducing terrorist access to official currencies has raised concerns that terrorist organizations might increase their use of such digital cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin to support their activities. RAND researchers thus consider the needs of terrorist groups and the advantages and disadvantages of the cryptocurrency technologies available to them.
Every year a staggering number of corporate service providers mask perpetrators of terrorist financing, corruption and illegal arms trades, but the degree to which firms flout global identification standards remains unknown. This book sheds new light on the sordid world of anonymous shell corporations through a series of field experiments.
Tracking funding is a critical part of the fight against terrorism and as the threat has escalated, so has the development of financial intelligence units (FIUs) designed to investigate suspicious transactions. Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering, and Tax Evasion: Examining the Performance of Financial Intelligence Units provides a thorough analy
Jimmy Gurulé knows how to bankrupt terrorists like few others do. As Undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, he spearheaded the fight against al-Qaeda s global bank accounts, helping to earn the highest grade awarded on the 9/11 Commissioners report card. As an author, he performs once again. Unfunding Terror provides policymakers and laymen alike a clear roadmap on how to keep terrorists out of the global financial system. Timothy J. Roemer, Center for National Policy, former US Congressman and member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) Jimmy Gurulé has given us a superbly comprehensive and well-written assessment of why, regarding terrorism, Deep Throat s principle is bang on: follow the money. R. James Woolsey, venture partner, VantagePoint, and former Director of Central Intelligence, US A detailed study by a true scholar-practitioner, Unfunding Terror explains the legal response to terror finance in language accessible to both the expert and layman. Required reading. Matthew Levitt, Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Intelligence and Analysis, US Professor Gurulé is comprehensive: he describes the problem (terrorist funding by those in the free world), analyzes the legal responses (make it a crime, freeze terrorist assets, impose regulations on financial institutions), critiques the administration s and international community s efforts to unfund terrorists (political rhetoric, not in fact backed up with effective strategies or implementation), and outlines concrete legal and administrative remedies. Would that they to whom the recommendations are addressed act on them quickly. Too much is at stake to let terrorists, who condemn the West as corrupt, get their funding to attack the US and its allies from the West itself. That would be a form of social suicide. G. Robert Blakey, Notre Dame Law School, US The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,973 innocent civilians required as much as $500,000 to stage. At the time, al Qaeda was operating on an annual budget of between $30 and $50 million. However, despite the obvious fact that terrorists need money to terrorize, preventing the financing of terrorism was not a priority for the United States or the international community prior to 9/11. Jimmy Gurulé, former Under Secretary for Enforcement in the US Department of the Treasury, provides the first book-length, comprehensive analysis of the legal regime that evolved following the terrorist attacks. The book begins with a discussion of how shutting down the pipelines of funding is as important as dismantling the terrorist cells themselves. Next, the book covers the various means and methods used by terrorist groups to raise money, and examines how money is transferred globally to finance their lethal activities. The principal components of the legal strategy to disrupt the financing of terrorism are then discussed and evaluated. Unfortunately, the author concludes that the legal regime has met with mixed results, and finds that the sense of urgency to deprive terrorists of funding that existed following 9/11 has since dissipated. As a result, international efforts to freeze terrorist assets have dramatically declined. Moreover, the US Department of Justice has suffered several embarrassing and disappointing legal defeats in prosecuting major terrorist financiers. The author provides numerous recommendations to Congress, the Executive Branch, and the UN Security Council for strengthening the legal regime to deny terrorists the money needed to wage global jihad, acquire weapons of mass destruction, and launch another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. Unfunding Terror fills an important gap in the literature and will be essential reading for counter-terrorism experts, law enforcement and national se
Without money, terrorists cannot function as organizations and cannot conduct attacks. Yet the questions remain, how vulnerable are terrorists to financial disruptions? Can governments put pressure on their finances in meaningful ways or are they too resilient and adaptive to be affected by state actions? These and other questions about terrorism financing are vigorously debated by scholars and policymakers, particularly since the attacks of September 11th 2001 . While there is a growing literature on policy issues, strategies, and countermeasures, states must first understand their enemies before developing strategies to defeat them. So, instead of focusing on the state response, this book asks a more foundational question: How do different terrorist groups actually raise money? What are their budgets? What do their portfolios look like? How have they changed over time? What are the advantages and disadvantages of different sources of financing? The book includes case studies of 11 different terrorist groups or sets of groups within a country. It is clear that each group has a different portfolio tailored to their needs and their environment and this makes countering terrorist financing more challenging for the state. This topical book will be required reading for all students and scholars interested in terrorism financing as well as those working in government agencies tasked with combating terrorist groups and their financial resources.
"Money laundering and terrorist financing are serious crimes that affect not only those persons directly involved, but the economy as a whole. According to international standards, every bank has the obligation to know its customers and to report suspicious transactions. Although these obligations sound straightforward, they have proved challenging to implement. What information precisely has to be gathered? How should it be recorded? If and when does one have to file a suspicious transaction report? It is here that a supervisor can play a crucial role in helping supervised institutions; first, in understanding the full extent of the obligations of Customer Due Diligence and Suspicious Transaction Reports (STR) and, second, in ensuring that those obligations are not just words on paper but are applied in practice. Effective supervision is key to the success of a country's AML/CFT system. In this regard, field work in both developed and developing countries has shown an overall low compliance in the area of supervision of banks and other financial institutions; supervisory compliance is indeed generally lower than the average level of compliance with all Financial Action Task Force recommendations. As a result, by providing examples of good practices, this book aims to help countries better conform to international standards. In this regard, this handbook is specifically designed for bank supervisors.
This book takes a broadly comparative approach to analyzing how the financing of global jihadi terrorist groups has evolved in response to government policies since September 11, 2001.
How does a group that operates terror cells and espouses violence become a ruling political party? How is the world to understand and respond to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that Palestinian voters brought to power in the stunning election of January 2006? This important book provides the most fully researched assessment of Hamas ever written. Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, draws aside the veil of legitimacy behind which Hamas hides. He presents concrete, detailed evidence from an extensive array of international intelligence materials, including recently declassified CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security reports. Levitt demolishes the notion that Hamas’ military, political, and social wings are distinct from one another and catalogues the alarming extent to which the organization’s political and social welfare leaders support terror. He exposes Hamas as a unitary organization committed to a militant Islamist ideology, urges the international community to take heed, and offers well-considered ideas for countering the significant threat Hamas poses.
