Crime bankrolls terrorism: official

Narcotics trafficking and compromised charities are key domestic bankrollers of suspected international terrorist activities, says the head of the federal financial intelligence agency. Speaking at a British economic crime symposium Wednesday, Jeanne Flemming, director of the secretive Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, or FINTRAC, said one-third of suspected terrorist-financing cases in Canada involve money from drug trafficking, fraud and other criminal enterprises.

Another one-quarter involve charities and non-profit organizations, she told the Cambridge University conference. Terror networks often use compromised or complicit charities and businesses as a veil of legitimacy to support their objectives. "These cases involve transactions that course through the mainstream financial system as part of the routine traffic of domestic and international transactions," she said.

FINTRAC was created a decade ago to help police investigate organized crime, but after 9/11, its mandate expanded to include terrorist financing. FINTRAC, along with Australia's financial intelligence unit are the only major western agencies that have the power to collect and analyse international electronic funds transfer reports involving transactions of $10,000 or more.

Seventy-seven per cent of the suspected terrorist-financing cases forwarded to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service by FINTRAC have resulted from the agency's ability to monitor wire transfers. "Not only were wire transfers a prominent feature in a large portion of our cases, in many instances without the wire transfer data we would not have reached a threshold of suspicion of terrorist-financing activity," said Flemming, who urged other nations to adopt the practice as well. "Money can leave a very useful trail when looking at a criminal enterprise or a terrorist network that is engaged in financing acts of violence in another country."

Read more...

Afghani drugs becoming a major Australian problem

AFGHAN heroin has been smuggled into Australia in increasing quantities in recent years, surpassing Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle as the principal source, as the deepening insurgency and a shift in US counter-narcotics policy block efforts to curb Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade. The Australian Crime Commission and Australian Federal Police say Afghanistan is becoming the dominant source of heroin in this country, accounting for as much as two-thirds of the drug imports in recent years. The latest International Narcotics Control Strategy report from the US State Department says that despite a decade of counter-narcotics efforts, Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium poppies, responsible for 90 per cent of the opium gum used to manufacture heroin worldwide, worth $2.8 billion a year. UN figures show opium production has exploded in the decade since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, with curbing the heroin trade a key objective. In 2001, poppy fields covered 7600ha and produced 185 tonnes of opium, last year they covered 131,000ha and produced 6900 tonnes.

IN May last year, Afghan national army commandos backed by coalition forces made an eye-popping find when they raided an insurgent stronghold in the town of Marjah in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Along with a large stash of bomb-making materials, they stumbled on the biggest opium cache located in Afghanistan. There were 18,000kg of raw opium, 200kg of heroin, 1000kg of hashish, 72,000kg of poppy seed and more than 20,000kg of precursor chemicals used to process opium into morphine and heroin. The discovery of the stash was proof of Afghanistan's emergence as not only the world's largest supplier of opium, responsible for more than 90 per cent of global stocks, but as a leading producer of processed heroin, which is flowing into Western markets including Australia. The narcotics factory at Marjah was one of 25 drug laboratories discovered and destroyed in Afghanistan last year. Tonnes of narcotics have been burned, several big traffickers imprisoned and others extradited to face trial in the US.

Read more...

Rising SA gold theft funding 'terrorism, human trafficking'

Increasing gold theft from South African mines was funding international terrorism and human trafficking and amounted to a global money-laundering operation of huge magnitude, Pan African Resources CEO Jan Nelson said yesterday.

"Dirty money is coming in and clean gold is going out," Nelson stated during the company's annual results presentation, where Pan African reported a 15% increase in underground gold production and 30% earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. “It's a money-laundering operation on a huge scale. We have to attack this problem at various levels and the role players are interacting and there is assistance from government," he said.

Pan African's security costs have risen to close to 3%, which represents a total of $15/oz of gold produced. Of that $15/oz, $7/oz goes directly towards fighting criminal miners. "Interpol is involved, because the money leaves South Africa and it's funding international terrorism and it's also funding human trafficking."

"Organised crime and terrorism: Observations from Southern Africa", Institute for Security Studies, March, 2005.

Read more...