AS 9/11 FADES INTO HISTORY, THE NEW GENERATION OF COMPLIANCE OFFICERS HAS CHOSEN TO IGNORE TERRORIST FINANCING; THIS NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED

If you haven't been a compliance officer for two decades or more, you weren't on the job when we were so acutely aware of the power of terrorist financing, and the clear and present danger that it posed to the Western democracies, and armed conflict in the Middle East. Here in 2024, you rarely hear any serious talk about procedures to counter the financing of terrorism, amongst our younger compliance professionals. This lack of awareness of the still-existing dangers requires attention; here's why.

The emergence of crypto as the perfect vehicle for terrorist financing has increased the threat level exponentially. I my articles, I have detailed how terrorist financiers, working out of the Republic of Malta have successfully moved large sums to Hamas with impunity for several years, with little or no significant EU interdiction success. Here in the United States, terrorist financiers in the state's large Arab-American community have been able to move funding nito designated terrorist organizations in the Middle East; only rarely have we seen US law enforcement agencies find and terminate those illicit pipelines with any consistency. Elsewhere in Europe, money launderers adept in the often undiscovered conversion from crypto into Euros, Sterling and US Dollars, and conversely out of it, are busy funding any one of a number of Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organizations.

Therefore, those of us who were already in this industry before 2001, and who have acquired the skill set to both recognize, as well as timely interdict, terrorist financing, owe it to our lesser CFT-experienced brethren to both train, as well as raise their awareness of, the intricacies, and special problems of countering the financing of terrorism, in frontline compliance operations. let's wake up our younger compliance staff to the dangers, and show them how it's done, lest they fail to spot something that results in a renewal of terrorist acts, funding of weapons acquisition, and their other dark goals and aims.