Background
In my work as a lawyer designing policy to combat money laundering and terrorist financing for the Indian government, there are certain trends in terms of the conduits of terrorist financing that are more visible depending on the region. Even though the funds received from drug trafficking and arms trading till date remain the most prevalent method to generate finances to fund terror operations. There exists the potential to identify practices that are representative and unique not only to the region, but also document the inflows of this category of money into a country and also whether there exist any regional trends in the financing of operations. In India and other countries in the sub- continent for example one visible trend has been the abuse of the NGO system to channel terror funds into the country. Similarly in Africa, the question of illegal gemstone trading, piracy and kidnapping are conduits employed more pre-dominantly that in other regions of the world. Analyzing such data could also clear up misconceptions about preferred conduits, thereby leading to the better utilization of personnel. A good example to this effect would be the spotlight that was shined on ‘’hawala” transactions post 9/11 as the ‘go to’ for terrorists to finance their operations. A couple of years down the road and many research papers later we now know that the sudden clamp down on these transactions and the many resources were put into oversight could have been better utilized identifying and understanding a greater variety of mechanism. Having stated all of this, my predominant hope would be that through analysis of the data one could establish trends that allow governments in the long run to fine tune and better target their regulatory and oversight mechanism.
Research Question Are there any identifiable trends for terrorist financing operations that affect India? Objectives 1. To identify countries/ regions where monetary inflows into India have been used/ attempted to be used to finance terror operations within the country 2. To identify trends in the preferred conduits for terrorist financing amongst these countries and also the preferred conduits for use within India 3. To identify regional patterns / connections for terrorist financing operations
Methodology Having previously conducted a survey and drafted a report on identifying money laundering trends in the securities markets in the Eurasian region for the Eurasina arm of the FATF (EAG), I am familiar with the sort of questionnaire that would need to be developed and also the kind of data that regulatory authorities in India have with them at present. An important pre-selection to conduct the appropriate analysis would be to not limit data to include only those financing operations that have resulted in actual terrorist attacks. This sort of restriction would prevent us from observing how successful oversight mechanisms have been in more established financial channels. At the same time there also has to be a data set indicating successful terrorist attacks and which conduit though which they occurred. Again, this help put down in very simple terms areas for improved regulation and oversight.
Limitations: Whilst, the first two objectives require data that can be collected from regulatory agencies in India itself, completing the analysis of the third objective might prove to be difficult unless countries or report from the FATF or regional arms of the FATF publish the necessary data in their own individual typology reports.
Attributes: The sort of data one would require in terms of attributes would be first a listing of all the various types of conduits that are employed for the financing of terrorism. These include piracy, trafficking, arms trading, nuclear proliferation, natural resource exploitation (oil and gemstones- can be treated as two separate categories), money routed through the formal banking sector that is not otherwise used in any other conduit, hawala transactions, charitable organizations and foundations etc. In India’s case automatically certain attributes will generate close to a zero result (natural resource exploitation, piracy, trafficking). The second set of attributes will be having data sets that grades the inflows of money from overseas into India in terms of these conduits (list of countries) and also the generation of these finances through these conduits within India. Finally a third column of data that identifies successful terror attacks and the conduit employed. It might be very hard to come across data that maps the conduit to an overseas region or to operations within India, hence, I don’t think it necessary to include that. With this data, we can examine the intersections between jurisdictions, frequency of inflow through a certain conduit, translation of finances into a terror operation.
1 comment:
As you know, looking at funds flow is a major terrorist-network analytical tool. You clearly know a lot about what's going on in India and have conducted surveys previously, so you know what kind of data is available and/or obtainable. What would have been helpful is a bit more clarity in detail about what SNA could do, in terms of the type of analysis you would actually recommend. You hint at it in your Attributes section, but it would have been helped by reference to some of the growing literature on this kind of work.
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