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.”

Gold said a search of Habib’s computer found he had donated funds to a terrorist front organisation, and visited anti-American, weaponry and hazardous material training portals. He added that the Habib case is not simply an aberration.

“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.

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