6 yrs after 9/11, US tracks illicit money funding terror

“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.

“In the course of working on this case, I’ve come in contact with people in other state governments and in the federal Government who report seeing the same pattern of people who have come into this country, who commit fraud and most of the funds are not staying here,” Gold said. “They are going back overseas. And it’s very organised.”

The San Diego meeting follows a recent Daily News series that found organised crime and terrorist groups in Los Angeles and across the US are defrauding government health and welfare programmes out of as much as $150 billion a year. Law enforcement officials say much of the money is laundered overseas where an unknown amount is used to support terror.

Bill McSweeney, the Sheriff’s Department Office of Homeland Security chief, said the agency is “more concerned than ever” about terrorist groups engaged in government fraud, narcotic trafficking and counterfeiting to raise money for their activities. “These types of crimes can quickly generate millions of dollars and are pretty darn sexy opportunities for people with terrorist enterprises,” McSweeney said.