A consortium launched in Singapore on Tuesday aims to choke militants’ access to funds in Southeast Asia which one analyst said could reach three million US dollars a month.
The Consortium for Countering the Financing of Terrorism aims to strengthen cooperation between banks, government agencies and academia to cut off funding for extremist groups. “We want to make it difficult for them (to transfer money). We will do everything possible to target… the financial infrastructure of terrorist groups,” terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna said.
The Association of Banks in Singapore, the government and the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) launched the consortium initially in Singapore, with plans for later involvement of other countries in the Asia Pacific region.
Gunaratna said militant groups, including the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), move between two and three million US dollars a month to fund their activities in Southeast Asia.
These groups use the banking system, informal money transfers and couriers carrying bags filled with cash to transfer the funds, said Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at RSIS.
“At least two to three million US dollars is moving in Southeast Asia per month for terrorism,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a closed-door seminar on countering the financing of terrorism.
More than 300 bankers, law enforcement officers and academics attended.
“Some of the money is raised in Southeast Asia, some of the money is coming from the Middle East and other countries,” he said, adding that the funds come from sympathetic donors, charities “infiltrated” by militant groups, criminal activities and “legitimate” businesses they control.
Gunaratna said his estimate was based on data gathered from the debriefing of captured militants, examination of documents seized from their training camps and from intelligence reports.
Those involved in the fund transfers include the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, both operating in the southern Philippines, as well as the Southeast Asia-based JI blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings and groups in southern Thailand and Indonesia, he said.
James Sassoon, president of the international Financial Action Task Force against money laundering and terrorist financing, called for a “more open and constructive” dialogue with the private sector.
He told the seminar that global financial centres such as London, New York and Singapore were attractive to money launderers and financiers of terrorism, who he warned were quickly modifying their techniques to avoid detection.
Part of the difficulty in tracking suspicious funds is that the money required to finance individual attacks is small, Sassoon said.
As an example, he said the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States cost only between $400,000 and $500,000