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| Volume X, Spring 2003, Number 1 |
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| EXCERPT: Hawala: The Terrorist's Informal Financial Mechanism |
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| Robert Looney |
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Dr. Looney is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School.
Since 9/11, investigations into the
al-Qaeda financial network have
led to several notable successes in
the United States and Europe. Much of this achievement in the United States has resulted from strengthening the financial investigatory powers of domestic law-enforcement agencies and coordinating them through the Treasury Department's new Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center. In other countries, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, for example, is helping to coordinate the tracking of terrorist funds through the global banking system and cracking down on countries that fail to improve transparency and regulation. These efforts are already proving useful in uncovering large-scale drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations. They have also helped reveal important information on terrorist groups, particularly those operating in the West.
Financial investigators tracking al-Qaeda assets rely heavily on data and paper trails from commercial banks and financial regulators in pursuing and investigating leads. Such data have involved the tracing of wire transfers between suspected hijacker Mohammed Atta and Shaykh Said of Dubai, believed to be one of Osama bin Laden's key financial operatives. Unfortunately, these efforts have achieved little success to date in reaching the core of the al-Qaeda financial network. The problem is that many of the organization's funding mechanisms -- like its cells -- are small and inconspicuous, often using a traditional Muslim method of money exchange called hawala.
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