Terrorist Financing

The motivation behind terrorist financing is opposed to profit-seeking, which is generally the motivation for most crimes associated with money laundering. Terrorism is intended to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any specific act through the threat of violence.

Terrorist groups develop sources of funding that are relatively mobile to ensure that funds can be used to obtain material and other logistical items needed to commit terrorist acts. Thus, money laundering is often a vital component of terrorist financing.

Terrorists generally finance their activities through both unlawful and legitimate sources. Unlawful activities, such as extortion, kidnapping, and narcotics trafficking, have been found to be a major source of funding. Other observed activities include smuggling, fraud, theft, robbery, identity theft, use of conflict diamonds, and improper use of charitable or relief funds. In the last case, donors may have no knowledge that their donations have been diverted to support terrorist causes.

Other legitimate sources have also been found to provide terrorist organizations with funding; these legitimate funding sources are a key difference between terrorist financiers and traditional criminal organizations. In addition to charitable donations, legitimate sources include foreign government sponsors, business ownership, and personal employment.

Although the motivation differs between traditional money launderers and terrorist financiers, the actual methods used to fund terrorist operations can be the same as or similar to those methods used by other criminals that launder funds. For example, terrorist financiers use currency smuggling, structured deposits or withdrawals from bank accounts; purchases of various types of monetary instruments; credit, debit, or prepaid cards; and funds transfers. There is also evidence that some forms of informal banking have played a role in moving terrorist funds. Transactions through informal banking are difficult to detect given the lack of documentation, their size, and the nature of the transactions involved. Funding for terrorist attacks does not always require large sums of money, and the associated transactions may not be complex.