CAN SCANDINAVIA TAKE A BITE OUT OF TERRORIST FINANCING WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGY?

The continuing presence of Hezbollah and Hamas agents in Scandinavia, especially in Norway and Sweden, is an ongoing problem that to date has not been adequately addressed, resulting in income-generating terrorist financing activities that only appear in the media when there is an isolated successful law enforcement operation targeting a specific operation. The abuse of fundraising activities with legitimate funds, or with seemingly legitimate purposes, non-complex financing schemes, the Hawala money transfer method including unregistered entities, often repeatedly sending small monetary transactions, engaging in criminal activity, and the import and export of goods, have all resulted in the financing of terrorist organizations located in the Middle East, which are sanctioned by most Western countries. 

The fact that the region has a large number of non-profit organizations, legitimately dedicated to charitable works, which enjoy wide public support, makes the identification of covert terrorist financing operations much more difficult. Indeed, funds collected by legitimate charities are even known to be later diverted to terrorist use, making identification nearly impossible. The current situation requires a new approach if a solution is to be found, to protect the region's banks and non-bank financial institutions from this threat.

It is suggested that the risk of unwittingly supporting repeated terrorist financing operations  can be greatly reduced through these methods:

(1) Employ advanced facial recognition platforms, which pair effective identification with adequate image databases, to identify individuals who have either present risks, or whose prior activities elsewhere mark them as a potential danger requiring enhanced due diligence. Individuals using aliases, or the identifies of others, and those with known participation in terrorist entities must be identified and removed from any involvement, and you need to learn who they are first to do that.

(2) Given the huge dilemma posed by a mass of unwieldy data, employ systems that use artificial intelligence, aided by machine learning, to uncover the elusive sources and methods terrorist financiers are engaging in, that have not been identified and interdicted by your compliance staff. There are connections your people have been unable to make, relationships that have gone undetected, and money flows that need to be interrupted in real-time, and not years later. Happy hunting.

   

SSSSSSSSS