The terrorist attacks etched in our collective memory...
could not have been committed without money, a network, or other resources.
The activities enabling terrorism or enabling the preparation of terrorism...
is what we call terrorist financing.
It entails all forms of assistance to terrorist groups...
or individuals with terrorist intent.
It is punishable by the Dutch penal code.
Terrorist financing is often mentioned in the same sentence as money laundering.
Yet, there is one fundamental difference.
Whereas money laundering is about disguising money obtained from crime...
terrorism financing is about disguising the destination.
This means that with terrorist financing the money can very well come out of legitimate sources...
such as a salary.
There are four stages.
Collect, Move, Store, and Use.
In the first stage a person or organization is collecting money...
to finance his or her terrorist act.
For example through crowdfunding.
In the next stage the money is transferred through the financial system.
For example, by depositing the donated money in an account...
and transferring it from there to a variety of different accounts.
The resources then have to be stored on a place that doesn’t draw attention.
There are many ways to do this. For example to store it on an account of a legal person...
on prepaid cards, or as cash money.
Eventually it needs to end up there...
where the terrorist act takes place or from which the terrorist organization operates.
This can be done via the traditional banking system, but also through for example virtual assets or through trading goods.
This is done to, for example, acquire a weapon, some other gear,
or to pay for a specific training needed to perform the terrorist act.
Valuable data can be extracted from the financial flows related to these four phases.
With the help of this financial intelligence...
we can contribute to not only tracing the terrorist...
but also to preventing terrorism both in the Netherlands and abroad.
FIU-the Netherlands. The power of financial intelligence.