(Reply to this) (Thread)

In answer to your question, the electronic transfers of large-scale terrorist funding - at the level of millions of dollars and quite justifiably described as warfare - occur under the aegis of state or quasi-state banks of one or two prominent oil-producing nations. As such, they are totally hidden from external scrutiny.

The small-scale stuff - paying for flying lessons, buying safe houses - is more visible after a terrorist event but almost impossible to spot beforehand because of the sheer number of transactions. The authorities have done very well indeed to shut down the blatant abuses, especially 'charitable' flows to terrorist organisations without shutting down the web of informal money transfers that underpins Arabic commercial life but they face enormous obstacles. London is happy to be a commercial hub, and in the unhappy situation of knowing that payments for that new Mosque in Lahore go through our networks, and that some of the money will be skimmed off for Kalashnikovs whatever we say or do.

What would you do? Shut it down entirely?

But yes, the old settlement, by which the Victorians tolerated anarchist groups who advocated the violent overthrow of monarchies - but not The Monarch is long, long gone.

And the money? I am amused by the unintended consequences of the Patriot Act on America's taxation system: for decades, money has flowed to the Cayman Islands in 'Mexican Laundry' offshore manouvres intended to shelter wealthy and well-connected citizens and companies from their tax obligations.

All of them are significant campaign donors - indeed, some of the money has been illicit campaign funding and undeclared income for senators, Congressmen, State legislators and their staffers - and this has secured an effective immunity from legislation. Even from effective investigation and enforcement of existing regulations.

Now that we've realised that money-laundering is dangerous to national security - and narco-dollars, apparently, were not - everything's been closed down. Yes, there are occasional 'one-off' holidays in which the Administration has allowed corporations to repatriate offshore funds without the punitive taxation that could - and should - have have been levied. But these amnesties have been in the hundred-million dollar range; there is no mercy for the small fry, transfers in the ten-thousand dollar range that fund a campaign for, say, the State Legislature or - God forbid - a prosecutorial appointment in the USA's highly-politicised judicial system.

So the times, they are-a-changin'. I have no idea what the other unintended consequences of the Patriot Act might be.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Yes, it was appallingly lax pre-9/11. Nobody cared.

But then, why would you report - say - a regular stream of payments from a charitable trust associated with - say - one of the hospitals or television stations run by Hizbullah, to a shell company that you know is run by a businessman receiving 'consultancy fees' in your own government's arms contracts to - say - Jordan?

Interesting things you overhear in bars in the Square Mile, some days.

But unless someone joins the dots - and very few people ever see all the disparate dots that form a pattern or make up a chain of evidence - then the information never actually existed. Worse, in these days of 'Chinese Walls', confidentiality, and fear of picking up dangerous 'insider' information, we're all terribly keen not to notice too many dots. Or so I'm told.

Me, I can think of excellent reasons to pass on that information but the mundane truth is that 'correspondent' banks handle those accounts and we just manage the transactions as a 'common carrier'. I hope to God we're not just handing over the lot to some Agency to trawl because that would be the same as as indiscriminate phone-tapping, or rummaging though everybody's credit-card receipts.

The less-mundane truth is that no action would ever be taken except that the parties involved would always hear about it and move their business elsewhere.

Whisper it quietly - and Montebourg, for some reason, won't say it very loudly at all - but the security services of certain European democracies are suspected of passing on the tip-off specifically to steer the business towards financial institutions regarded as 'national champions'. Institutions that received a lot of business, mostly legitimate, that was squeezed out of the USA in the clampdown following 9/11.

Or maybe they just felt unwelcome. Many Arabs and Moslems do, thse days.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Reply to this)