Terror financing on rise
$256M came through Canada in year
Stewart Bell, National Post, October 05, 2006
TORONTO - Terrorist groups funnelled an estimated $256-million through Canada this past year, the federal anti-money laundering agency said in a report to Parliament yesterday.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) said it had detected as many as 34 suspected terrorist-financing networks operating in the country, partly as a result of a strategy geared at identifying significant money-laundering networks.
The quarter of a billion in money they allegedly moved in the year ending March 31 was up from last year's total of $180-million and the $70-million detected in 2004.
An additional $4.75-billion was laundered by crime groups in Canada during the same period, an increase from $2-billion in 2005, the report said.
The Conservative government pledged in July to spend $5-billion over the next five years to beef up Canada's fight against terror financing and money laundering.
"Canada's new government will be relentless in its efforts to combat money-laundering and terrorism financing," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in a statement yesterday.
Formed in 2000, FINTRAC is Canada's national financial intelligence agency. It monitors transactions made not only at banks but also at foreign exchange dealers and money transfers.
When analysts come across suspicious flows of cash, they report them to police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for further investigation.
Director Horst Intscher said the record amount of money detected this year was the result of a strategy to deliberately target large-scale money-laundering networks.
"More and more our financial intelligence output is being reflected in investigations, charges and prosecutions," he said.
Canada has not convicted anyone for financing terrorism since the practice was outlawed in 2001, but the RCMP is investigating what it claims is a Tamil Tigers fundraising operation in Toronto and Montreal.
Officers from the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team searched the offices of the World Tamil Movement in April, seizing what police have called "significant evidence of terrorist financing."
An Ontario court judge agreed last week to let the RCMP keep the seized items until early next year. Investigators had argued for more time on the grounds they needed to examine a huge volume of material, some of it in the Tamil language.
Canada has long been a fundraising base for international terrorist groups, from the IRA and Hezbollah to the Iranian MEK and Babbar Khalsa, which was responsible for the 1985 Air-India bombings.
A newly disclosed "secret" intelligence report prepared for Prime Minister Stephen Harper says terrorists continue to use Canada to bankroll violent activities.
"A number of organizations that practise terrorism use Canada as a source of funds, recruitment and safe haven," says the March 24 report, obtained under the Access to Information Act.
"Canada is home to [censored] individuals, often citizens born and radicalized here, who are capable of, and in some instances are planning, terrorist operations in Canada," the report says.
"Apparent target surveillance of infrastructure and government facilities has occurred. Foreign-based terrorist groups recruit, raise funds and find safe haven in Canada."
Civil liberties advocates have been raising alarms about banking surveillance programs since newspapers revealed in June that American counterterrorism investigators had been monitoring millions of financial transactions through a European-based co-operative called SWIFT.
The U.S. Treasury tapped into SWIFT, which conveys funds for 7,800 banks in 206 countries, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in order to monitor banking activities for possible links to terrorism.
Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, announced in August that she had launched an investigation to find out whether the personal information of Canadians had been disclosed by SWIFT to foreign authorities.
FINTRAC said in its report yesterday that it has strict measures in place to protect personal information.