Terror Funding

• India and Russia on 2024 July 9 called for “zero tolerance” and uncompromising fight against terrorism.

Or

• Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed India in its ‘regular follow-up category’ after an evaluation during 2023-24. This status is held only by four other G20 countries.

Or

• The tendency to categorise terrorism on the basis of motivations behind terrorist acts is “dangerous” and all kinds of terror attacks, whether motivated by Islamophobia, anti-Sikh, anti-Buddhist or anti-Hindu prejudices, are condemnable. (India at UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy in 2023)

Or

• There were concerted attempts to revive militancy in the Jammu region in the past three years.

• Terrorism is violence, or the threat of violence against non-combatant or civilians, usually motivated by Religious – Ideological – Political (RIP ) beliefs.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime

1.     Recruiting and supporting the members

2.     Maintaining logistics hubs

3.     Conducting operations

2.     Developing and maintaining a terrorist organisation and its ideology

3.     Promoting militant ideology

4.     Pay operatives and their families

5.     Travel arrangement

6.     Train new members

7.     Forge documents

8.     Pay bribes

9.     Acquire weapons

10.  To stage the attacks.

11.  Recruitment

12.  Training

2.     Hawala networks.

3.     Banking networks including SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications)

4.     Block chain technology

2.     Money exchangers

3.     Real estate

4.     Retail outlets

5.     NGOs

6.     Charitable trusts

7.     State sponsors.

2.     Organised fraud

3.     Narcotics smuggling

4.     Illegal activities in failed states and other safe havens.

5.     Movement of Goods

a.      low-level fraud

b.     Kidnapping for ransom

c.      Misuse of non-profit organisations

d.     Illicit trade in commodities (such as oil, charcoal, diamonds, gold and the narcotic “captagon” a Jihadi Drug)

e.      Digital currencies.

f.      Virtual assets

g.     Crowd funding

h.     Dark web.

i.       Betting

j.       Hawala

k.     Charities from civil society

l.       Money laundering through legal gambling

2.     Prepaid cards

3.     Digital currency (crypto)

4.     Gold

5.     Online payments

6.     UPI transactions

39 Terror outfits banned by the Government of India.

2.     Jamaat – Ud – Dawah

3.     Hizbul – Mujahideen

4.     Lashkar – e – Taiba

5.     Lashkar – e – Jabbar

6.     Lashkar – e – Jhangvi

7.     Al – Badr

8.     Al Barq

9.     Harkat – ul – Ansar

10.  Harkat – ul – Mujahideen

11.  CPI – ML – PWG

12.  CPI – Maoist

They are performing charity organizations.

Ex: Jamaat – Ud – Dawah. It is operated by Hafiz Saeed ( 26/11 master mind).

a.      It has a charity body called Falah – e – Insaniat Foundation. It operates hospitals, dispensaries, ambulances, blood donation camps etc. they also push hate propaganda along with philanthropic aid. It uses welfare services to convince the youth to join the band.

b.     The political wing of the Jamat – Ud – Dawah is Milli Muslim League.

Its “associates or affiliates or fronts including –

1.     Rehab India Foundation (RIF)

2.     Campus Front of India (CFI)

3.     All India Imams Council (AIIC)

4.     National Confederation of Human Rights Organization (NCHRO)

5.     National Women’s Front

6.     Junior Front

7.     Empower India Foundation

8.     Rehab Foundation, Kerala

9.     Political wing – Socialist Democratic Party of India.

• 1989: Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed as a means of bringing order and implementing standards to the monetary system in the world with regard to terror finance and money laundering.
• 1995: Egmont Group was established. The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units is an international organization that facilitates cooperation and intelligence sharing between national financial intelligence units to investigate and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
• 1999: The Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB) of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) works on the legal aspects of countering the financing of terrorism, including promoting the ratification of the relevant universal legal instruments, in particular the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the implementation of these international standards.
• 1999: The UNSCR resolution 1267: Financial sanctions against terror funding.
• 2001: UNSCR resolution 1373: More sanctions introduced against terror funding

2.     Preventing abuse of drones, social media platforms, and crowd-funding, and create guidelines that will help to tackle the growing issue.

• FATF is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.
• The FATF works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas.

• Federal agency established by the Indian Government to combat terror in India.

• To prevent the laundered money for terror funding.

a.      2004 to criminalise terror funding

b.     2008 to align with the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism

c.      2019 to designate an individual as a “terrorist”.

d.     2021 to expand the scope of definition of “proceeds of terrorism” to include any property that could be used for terrorism. It is made a criminal act to produce, smuggle, or circulate high-quality counterfeit Indian currency

NATGRID is seamless and secure database which provides information on terrorists, economic crimes etc.

• Mandate is to share terrorism related intelligence inputs on a daily basis to the NSG Hubs to ensure a rapid response to terrorist attacks and Coastal Security Scheme for maritime security.

• Overall approach of ‘Beyond-Border Cooperation” is the basis for countering terror funding in global level. India has sensed the need for permanency of this unique initiative of NMFT, in order to sustain the continued global focus on countering the financing of terrorism – proposal for permanent Secretariat made for focussing more on this contagious issue.

• State Investigation Agency (SIA) of the J&K Police barred the Jamaat-e-Islami from using and entering into its 11 properties in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district worth more than Rs. 90 Crores.

2.     JAM Trinity

3.     Countering of Financing of Terrorism (CFT Cell) established in 2006 for coordination on combating of terror funding.

4.     A Terror Funding and Fake Currency (TFFC) Cell has been constituted in 2019 with in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to conduct focused investigation into terror funding and fake currency cases.

5.     Training programmes are regularly conducted for the State Police personnel on issues relating to combating terrorist financing.

6.     Fake Indian Currency Notes Coordination Group (FCORD) has been formed in 2016 by the Ministry of Home Affairs to share intelligence/information among the security agencies of the states/centre to counter the problem of circulation of fake currency notes.

7.     Third ministerial ‘No Money for Terror (NMFT)’ conference was held on 18^th  and 19^th November 2022 .

2.     State sponsored terrorism

Example:

Iran supports –

a.      Hamas

b.     Hezbollah

c.      Houthi

d.     Harakat – al – Nujabe

3.     Viewing terrorism as a lucrative business of –

a.      Oil

b.     Minerals

c.      Weapons

4.      State support to terrorism as part of their foreign policy.

5.     Failure of international agencies including the UN.

6.     Support from the armed Non – state actors

7.     Proxy wars.

Example:

Iran using the Houthis in the war against Israel.

2.     It should not be allowed in any form or for any reason – what so ever.

3.     Considering that even a single attack is one too many. Even a single life lost is one too many.

4.     Do not rest till terrorism is uprooted.

5.     Countries around the world should strike at the root of terror financing.

6.     Uprooting terrorism needs a larger proactive response.

7.     If we want our citizens to be safe, then we cannot wait until terror comes to our homes. We must pursue terrorists, break their support networks and hit their finances.

8.     Organisations and individuals that try to create sympathy for terrorists must also be isolated.

9.     Crack down organized crime.

10.  Involve the private sector

11.  Promoting cooperation is needed not only in the physical world but also in the virtual world too.

12.  Care must be taken to prevent the misuse of differences in the legal provisions across the nations.

2.     Joint operations

3.     Intelligence coordination.

4.     Extradition

5.     Accurate and well linked financial intelligence

6.     Fully criminalising terror financing

7.     Enhancing the traceability and transparency of financial flows

8.     Effectively implementing UN sanctions, cooperation on intelligence sharing, and capacity building of countries that did not fully adhere to FATF.

9.     Private sector can play critical role in detecting and preventing misuse of financial systems by terrorists.

10.  Strict monitoring over the Not – for profit organizations.

2.     United global effort

3.     Strict crack down over the social media used by the terror groups.

2.     The 3T strategy of “Trace, Target, and Terminate”, to be adopted from low-level economic offenses to more organized economic crimes

3.     Strengthening and harmonizing the legal structures related to terror finance,

4.     Developing a robust mechanism against the misuse of Next Generation Technology

5.     Strengthening the legal and regulatory framework for asset recovery.