Almost six years after 9/11, amid warnings that the al-Qaeda network has strengthened, US law enforcement officials and other experts said last week that they are only now starting to quantify the money terrorists are raising through criminal enterprises in the United States.

“It’s going under the radar,” said Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy in New York City and an expert on terrorism funding. “The biggest problem is that people are not looking for this and prosecutors are not looking beyond what is clearly evident.”

Michael Downing, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, said agencies are honing in on cutting off terrorist funding.

Downing said illicit funds account for about 10 per cent of the total global flow of money—up from about 2 per cent in 1998. “Even if a portion of that went to terrorism, it’s frightening,” Downing said. “Not only that, but you see the convergence of organised crime and terrorism occurring.”

US Government fraud inves- tigators, prosecutors and insurance industry leaders are set to meet later this month in San Diego to discuss strategies to combat the problem. California Deputy Attorney General Hardy R Gold is scheduled to detail a case he prosecuted involving 58-year-old Buena Park tax preparer Yakoob Habib. Habib was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in a scheme that defrauded Medi-Cal out of $28 million and laundered much of the money to Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia and Latvia.

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