Mujahideen paid by D-Gang’s hawala

The Indian Mujahideen finance their jihadist operations with money distributed through terror mogul Dawood Ibrahim’s illegal hawala network.  While it has long been known that Dawood Ibrahim is a bankroller for terrorism, his specific ties to the Indian Mujahideen are what makes this article from the Hindustan Times newsworthy:

Is Dawood funding Indian terror?

Presley Thomas     Mumbai, May 03, 2013

Dawood Ibrahim, the man who maimed Mumbai on March 12, 1993, has emerged as the face behind homegrown terrorist outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM). Dawood and his intricate network of bogus hawala firms, spread across the country, have been covertly financing IM’s network in India, said sources in the central agencies and counter-terrorism units investigating blast cases across the country.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has been informed of Dawood’s alleged extensive hawala network in the Middle East and South Asian countries. A detailed probe by the Anti-Money Laundering / Suspicious Cases Unit (AMLU) is underway in the Middle East, sources said.

The involvement of Dawood’s  gang, the D-Company, in financing terror through his network of hawala firms was unearthed during investigations into the July 13, 2011 blasts in Mumbai, (where the IM was allegedly involved) said sources in central agencies and counter-terrorism units. Many key players in the attacks are suspected to have links with Dawood.

A sum of Rs. 10 lakh had been sent by alleged hawala operator Muzzafar Kola to IM kingpin Yasin Bhatkal through Delhi-based Kanwar Nain Pathrija, police sources said. The investigating agencies then suspected the involvement of the D-Company and intercepted telephone conversations from across the border showed directions being given to certain people, along with details of the money flow and transfers through hawala transactions. Kola, sources said, was a Mustafa Dossa man who later became a Dawood associate.

These reports led agencies to believe that Bhatkal, a Fazal-ur-Rehman gang member who now heads the IM, was working closely with Dawood and his company…

Mumbai: bank robberies and bitcoin fund terror

The Indian Mujahideen have been using bank robberies to finance their activities according to a former high-ranking law enforcement official.  D. Sivanandhan is also concerned about bitcoin’s role in funding militants, but it should be noted that no evidence or data are included in this news report:

Banks looted to finance terrorism: Security expert

Mumbai, April 11 (IANS) Bit coin and crypto currencies are becoming major avenues for money laundering and terror groups often rob banks for funding terrorist acts, a top security expert said.

“Investigations have revealed that the hijackers of the Indian Airlines IC-814 had looted a bank three months before the (Kandahar) hijack, which helped them finance the entire terror operations,” said former Maharashtra director general of police and security expert D. Sivanandhan.

Similarly, the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen has also been allegedly involved in several bank robberies to finance its operations, Sivanandhan said at a conference — ‘Leveraging Innovative Security Solutions for Banks and Financial Institutions’ — that concluded here late Wednesday…

See related Money Jihad coverage of bank robberies for jihad here, here, and here, and background on the Indian Mujahideen’s financial activities, which include hawala and extortion, here.

India: hawala is 30 percent of terror revenues

Hawala, the traditional Islamic system of transferring money and debts, is essentially outlawed in India.  However, the practice, which is difficult to trace and lends itself well to illicit financial activity, is still commonplace.  A recent article in the news website Rediff.com asserts that 10 percent of all such hawala transactions in India go toward funding terrorism, and that 30 percent of terrorists’ money comes from hawala.  Much of it is transferred from the Gulf (including Dubai) to Kerala, a hotspot for terror finance.

Time to revisit hawala policy?  Money Jihad thinks so.

H/t to Bob Connors.

Crores being pumped into India by ISI to finance terror

Apr. 1, 2013

In almost every hawala deal, 10 per cent of the amount goes towards terror funding, reports Vicky Nanjappa  

A sharp rise in the number of terror financing cases in 2012 in India is an indicator to how well terror groups have channelized their resources.

According to the Financial Intelligence Unit, in 2009, the number of terror financing cases was recorded at 200 but rose to 1,400 cases in 2012.

The FIU report states that the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan manages to raise Rs 1,800 crore annually to fund terrorist activities especially against India. Today, the Intelligence units say that the amount has shot up to Rs 2,400 crore, as the intensity of their programme against India too is expected to see a rise.

In the past, the ISI adopted to circulating fake Indian currency, ensuring that a certain amount of money through hawala transactions, extortions and drug trade was handed over to them.

As per the latest FIU report, there have been 1,444 cases of terror financing last year. In 2011 the figures were 428 cases and in 2010 it was 316.

Sources in the Intelligence Bureau say that out of the 1,444 cases, almost 65 per cent are related to fake currency.

Last year, around 3,20,000 fake notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations were found, while the year before that around 2,50,000 notes were found.

Sources say that while fake currency accounted for a major chunk of terror financing, hawala transactions accounted for at least 30 per cent. In almost every hawala deal, 10 per cent of the amount goes towards terror funding. The biggest hawala transactions have been from the Gulf to Kerala. Proof of such transactions being used for terror related activities was found during the 2006 train bombings in which an amount of Rs 4.5 lakh was exchanged to carry out the attack.

The Indian Mujahideen in particular has a dedicated network through which it collects money in Delhi. The money is wired from Gulf to Kerala and then to New Delhi…

Health care fraudsters sent $1.1 million to Iran

Hossein Lahiji, Co-defendant

Hossein and Najmeh Lahiji, a naturalized U.S. citizen and his wife, have been indicted for medical billing fraud in Texas, and for sending the illicit proceeds to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.  Dr. Lahiji even accepted payments for medical treatment he claimed to perform in Texas while he was actually in Tehran.

The Lahijis funneled the dirty money through Espadana Exchange, an “unlicensed money remitting business”—ie, hawala business.  Iran sanctions expert and D.C. attorney Erich Ferrari has previously advised Iranian-Americans to “Just Say No” to engaging in hawala, also called havaleh, transactions destined for Iran.  Evidently, the Lahijis didn’t take his advice.

The couple’s trial was scheduled to begin yesterday.  The U.S. attorney’s office has these details:

McAllen Urologist and Wife Charged in Heath Care Fraud Scheme and Conspiracy to Violate Iranian Sanctions

HOUSTON – A federal grand jury has returned a four-count, superseding indictment against urologist Hossein Lahiji M.D. and his wife, attorney Najmeh Vahid Lahiji, both of McAllen and San Antonio, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today. The second superseding Indictment, returned late yesterday, charges the couple with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud and for conspiring to violate Iranian sanctions.

The Lahijis are set to appear in Houston tomorrow morning at 9:45 before U.S. District Judge Mary Milloy.

This indictment alleges the Lahijis conspired to violate Iranian Sanctions by transferring approximately $1.1 million to Iran. The Lahijis allegedly utilized an unlicensed money remitting business called the Espadana Exchange to avoid the United States banking regulations and to allegedly make it appear they were not violating the United States embargo with Iran. The indictment alleges the defendants sent some of the monies representing profits of their alleged illegal health care fraud scheme to Iran for the purpose of making an investment on behalf of Hossein Lahiji and Najmeh Vahid Lahiji in real estate rental property in Iran, all in violation of the Iranian sanctions.

“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will tenaciously pursue individuals who violate international emergency economic powers statutes,” said IRS-Criminal Investigation (CI) Special Agent in Charge Lucy Cruz. “IRS-CI’s unique skill set is to unravel the often concealed complex networks used to disguise international financial crimes.”

The health care fraud scheme alleged in this indictment accuses Hossein and Najmeh Lahiji of conspiring to defraud multiple health care benefit programs by submitting false and fraudulent claims in connection with the use of unlicensed and unqualified medical personal and for billing for medical services not rendered.

Somali conspirators found guilty as charged

San Diego imam and three cohorts laundered money, financed terror

Two of the four financiers: Imam Mohamed Mohamud (left) and Issa Doreh (right)

Many readers are probably already aware of the conviction as it has received fairly extensive print news coverage.  The best report on the Feb. 22 verdicts comes from the FBI itself:

San Diego Jury Convicts Four Somali Immigrants of Providing Support to Foreign Terrorists

Defendants Sent Money to al Shabaab in Somalia

SAN DIEGO, CA—A federal jury today convicted four Somali immigrants, including a popular imam at a City Heights mosque, of conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist group al Shabaab.

The jury found that the four men—Basaaly Saeed Moalin, a cabdriver in San Diego; Issa Doreh, a worker at a money transmitting business that was the conduit for moving the funds; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam at a mosque frequented by the city’s immigrant Somali community; and Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, a cabdriver from Anaheim—conspired to raise money for the foreign terrorist organization and send it back to Somalia.

During the three-week trial, the United States presented evidence that Moalin, Mohamud, Doreh, and Nasir conspired to provide money to al Shabaab, a violent and brutal militia group in Somalia that engages in suicide bombings, targets civilians for assassination, and uses improvised explosive devices. In February 2008, the U.S. Department of State formally designated al Shabaab as a foreign terrorist organization.

At trial, the jury listened to dozens of the defendants’ intercepted telephone conversations, including many conversations between defendant Moalin and Aden Hashi Ayrow, one of al Shabaab’s most prominent leaders who was subsequently killed in a missile strike on May 1, 2008. In those calls, Ayrow implored Moalin to send money to al Shabaab, telling Moalin that it was “time to finance the Jihad.” Ayrow told Moalin, “You are running late with the stuff. Send some and something will happen.” In the calls played for the jury, Ayrow repeatedly asked Moalin to reach out to defendant Mohamud—the imam—to obtain funds for al Shabaab.

According to the evidence presented at trial, the defendants conspired to transfer the funds from San Diego to Somalia through the Shidaal Express, a now-defunct money transmitting business in San Diego.

The United States also presented a recorded telephone conversation in which defendant Moalin gave the terrorists in Somalia permission to use his house in Mogadishu, Somalia, telling Ayrow that “after you bury your stuff deep in the ground, you would, then, plant the trees on top.” Prosecutors argued at trial that Moalin was offering a place to hide weapons…

Basaaly Moalin, the most malicious and vocal of member of the conspiracy, could be sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison, with his co-defendants facing shorter terms.

The disturbing (but frankly unsurprising) involvement of an imam in the conspiracy is not the only important takeaway from this trial.

The critical lesson illustrated by this case is that remittances to Somalia are fraught with risk; ordinary Somali customers undoubtedly used the services of Shidaal Express prior to its closure.  Even customers who had no intention of funding terrorism supplemented Shidaal’s business and indirectly aided al-Shabaab.

Shidaal Express in San Diego

This is why banks have to make very careful decisions about money services businesses (MSBs) that they may take on as commercial clients.  Banks must evaluate whether the risk of supporting terrorism is too high to continue doing business with a particular individual or MSB.

Why on earth would anybody still criticize banks in Minnesota for ceasing to providing money transfer services to Somalia?  The evidence has become far too clear that Somali remittances bear an unacceptable risk of being siphoned off for terrorist purposes.

IPT has previously reported on the details of the money transfers in the San Diego conspiracy, which further illustrate the fundamental riskiness of the Somali remittance business:

The men used hawalas—both registered and unregistered—to move money from the United States to African countries. Two of the hawalas identified—Shidaal Express, Inc.,and North American Money Transfer, Inc.—have a history of money laundering and terror-financing violations, public records show.

Take, for example, North American Money Transfer (NAMT) which is incorporated in Georgia, but has branches in Missouri and elsewhere throughout the United States. In August 2009, the Justice Department charged the company with a series of financial crimes, including operating as an unlicensed money transmitting business in the State of Michigan. According to the indictment, between Jan. 3, 2008 and April 15, 2009, “NAMT wire transferred approximately $12,820,000 from the United States to Africa Horn in the United Arab Emirates, for distribution to the intended recipients in Somalia and other countries located in the Horn of Africa.”

Over a period of 10 months, the defendants in the cases announced Wednesday raised and transferred approximately $26,000 from various locations within the United States to Somalia. Separating the payments into 20 separate transactions, each of them were structured to evade the $3,000 limit that would have required the hawala to verify a name and address of the sender through a photo identification.

Terror financing reliant on hawala, NPOs

The use of unlicensed money services businesses leads a new list published in the Journal of Money Laundering Control about the financing of terrorist operations.  The use of hawala for terrorism is followed by the use of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) such as charities, and the use of front companies comes in third place.  Their figures are in Australian dollars:

Researchers Angela Samantha Maitland Irwin, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, and Lin Liu also find that terrorists are unlikely to use classic money laundering techniques such as placement, layering, or integration (which is consistent with prior Money Jihad analysis).  Their paper, “An Analysis of Money Laundering and Terrorism Tinancing Typologies” is based on an examination of 184 typologies published by financial compliance bodies.

This is very valuable research, and the authors have done very well to quantify the categories of terror financing.  It is somewhat unfortunate that data is not yet available from the various financial bodies on trafficking, insurance fraud, and the other types of financing mentioned in the chart.

Previously, Money Jihad has endorsed a 1 percent tax on hawala remittances to 1) provide for better tracking of hawala by putting hawala dealers under the jurisdiction of tax authorities rather than financial regulators who are focused on larger banks, and 2) to recoup some of the regulatory costs associated with monitoring hawala transactions.

How king of hawala funds Taliban’s terror

Haji Khairullah links heroin kingpins, jihadists, and hawala dealers in an “iron triangle” of terrorist financing according to U.S. and Afghan investigators quoted in a recent Reuters article.

Khairullah, who was blacklisted with sanctions from the U.S. Treasury Department last summer for his role in funding the Taliban, is the chief of a multi-million dollar hawala business spanning from Pakistan to Dubai.

Hawala is a traditional Muslim method of transferring cash that is difficult to detect or interdict, making it an ideal money service solution to Islamists.

The whole article is worth a read for the context it provides into the overlap between conventional business activities and terrorist financing in Afghanistan.  Here are just some of the most salient passages:

…The hunt for Khairullah’s presumed millions points to the sheer difficulty of choking Taliban funding channels.

Investigators who venture into the region’s forbidding ecosystem of illicit commerce find that lines between legitimate trade and criminality often blur, hand-written ledgers are barely decipherable, and deceptively nondescript offices move mountains of cash.

“Everything is done on a phone call and a handshake,” said one U.S. official. “The record system or the paper trail that allow you to connect the dots is not as clear as the Western system.”

In Kandahar’s seven-storey money market, where turbaned dealers haggle over bricks of well-worn notes, Khairullah’s colleagues leapt to the defense of a respected member of their age-old fraternity.

“When we went to his office, we only saw people changing money or drinking tea or eating sweets,” said Haji Qandi Agha, a regal-looking trader who is the market’s president. “There was no talk of the Taliban or heroin.”

Agha gestured to a man with a close-cropped beard and embroidered skull cap who had just approached his counter.

“For example, this man is sending money,” he said, after the customer produced a sheaf of grubby bills from his waistcoat. “What if the government or America captures him and says he’s Taliban? Is it my crime?”

The man, counting with deft thumbs, did not look up…

Current and former officials ascribe Khairullah’s wealth to… Afghanistan’s burgeoning heroin trade.

“He is one of the biggest fish in the region,” said General Khodaidad (who goes by one name), Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics minister from 2007 to 2010.

A source in Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force also said Khairullah was suspected of involvement in trafficking. “He is rich and resourceful, therefore no one can touch him,” he said…

Investigators suspect Khairullah stands at the centre of an “iron triangle” locking hawala dealers, heroin kingpins and militants into an increasingly profitable symbiosis.

Taliban commanders would collect opium from poppy growers, then hand it over at his shops in farming communities in return for instant payments, a Western official said.

“He would take opium and give you cash,” he said.

U.S. names multi-million dollar Taliban hawaladar

In RadicalIslam.org’s interview with Money Jihad, we discussed how poorly the U.S. has handled the scourge of hawala, the traditional Islamic method of transferring money.

The Bush administration talked about hawala, but wasn’t able to accomplish much to stop the opaque money swapping method that is often used to fund terrorism.  The Obama administration has been worse, passing up a golden opportunity to seek a maximum penalty against the hawala dealer who funded the failed Times Square bomber.

The latest news that the Treasury Department has sanctioned a hawala business with branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran that has transferred millions of dollars for the Taliban is somewhat encouraging.  We’ve always known that these cases exist, but normally we don’t even hear about them because of diplomatic sensitivities with Pakistan.  The fact that the feds would go public with this information is a step in the right direction.

But in practical terms, the sanctions are largely symbolic.  As Treasury’s press release said, “As a result of today’s action, all property in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons in which Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and Musa Kalim have an interest is blocked, and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.”

That is, unless Rahat maintains an account a U.S. bank, it is unlikely that any funds will be frozen as a result of this action.

As long as we have troops on the ground in Afghanistan, it would be somewhat more effective to treat the Afghan branch of Rahat Ltd as a military target:  raid the branch, detain and interrogate its employees, and confiscate its records.  There’s more intelligence to be gathered about the Taliban’s financials.

Here are the basics we know from Treasury:

Treasury Imposes Sanctions on a Hawala and Two Individuals Linked to the Taliban

11/20/2012
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the designation of Rahat Ltd, a hawala, and two individuals pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224. Rahat Ltd has branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran which have been used by the Taliban to facilitate their illicit financial activities. The Treasury Department is also designating the owner of Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and the owner and manager of its Quetta, Pakistan branch, Musa Kalim.

Rahat Ltd has been used extensively by senior Taliban leadership to finance their violent activities. This includes facilitating millions of dollars of transactions to support the Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province, United Nations Security Council 1988-Listed Naim Barich, who was also designated November 15, 2012 pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for his extensive narcotics production and distribution activities.

“Today’s action demonstrates our continued efforts to target and disrupt financial activity linked to the Taliban’s use of hawalas,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen. “We will continue exposing these illicit networks and deprive the Taliban of their sources of funding no matter where they turn.”

As a result of today’s action, all property in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons in which Rahat Ltd, Mohammed Qasim, and Musa Kalim have an interest is blocked, and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

Rahat Ltd

Rahat Ltd is a hawala that facilitates financial activities for the Taliban.  Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich provides funds through Rahat Ltd to subordinate Taliban commanders to plan and conduct operations in southern Afghanistan.  As of mid-2012, Barich had transferred money using the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd.  As of early 2012, Barich had received millions of dollars through the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd and had provided a senior Taliban commander with over $250,000 via Rahat Ltd.

Other senior Taliban figures regularly used Rahat Ltd to store and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As of early 2012, approximately $500,000 of Taliban funds had been placed in the Quetta branch of Rahat Ltd and, as of late 2011, a senior Taliban member arranged the transfer of over $100,000 through the same Rahat Ltd hawala.

Mohammed Qasim

Mohammed Qasim owns Rahat Ltd and, as of mid-2012, was a hawaladar for Taliban senior leadership.  As of mid-2011, Qasim used his hawalas in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran to facilitate Taliban financial transfers.  As of early 2011, Qasim was a financial assistant to Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich.  Additionally, in early 2012, Qasim helped to transport weapons and ammunition for the Taliban and, as of mid-2011, frequently smuggled weapons into Helmand Province for the Taliban.

Musa Kalim

Musa Kalim owns and runs the Quetta, Pakistan branch of Rahat Ltd, also known as the New Chagai Trading Company and the Musa Kalim Hawala.

As of late 2012, Taliban shadow governor for Helmand Province Barich had used Kalim to move and hold his finances.  As of late 2011, the bulk of Kalim’s hawala business consisted of transferring Taliban and smugglers’ funds.  Kalim also managed the transfer of funds from donors in the Gulf to support Taliban fighters in 2011…

Bangladesh overwhelmed by the financial jihad

Bangladesh continues to teach the world more and more about the collusion between Islamic sharia financial institutions and terrorist organizations.

First there was the revelation that IBBL uses zakat to fund terrorists.  Then there was the U.S. Senate’s damaging report about HSBC last summer which highlighted the British bank’s relationships with IBBL and another sinister sharia bank in Bangladesh, the Social Islami Bank Limited.

The revelations probably had something to do with FATF issuing a warning to Bangladesh to clean up its act and tighten the screws on terror financing.  The government of Bangladesh is indeed trying to, but the jihadi swamp there is so foul, and sharia banking is so dominant over conventional banking, that one wonders if the swamp can ever be drained.

This informative November article from the Eurasia Review provides some excellent background on the last 20 years of terrorist financing in Bangladesh and how the country wound up in its current stew with FATF:

Bangladesh: Banking For Terror – Analysis

By: SATP
November 12, 2012

By Sanchita Bhattacharya

In what seems a logical culmination of events, Bangladesh has been given time until February 2013 to address deficiencies in its fight against money-laundering and terror-financing to avert black-listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)…

…[T]he U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, in its July 17, 2012, report titled U.S. Vulnerabilities to Money Laundering, Drugs and Terrorist Financing: HSBC Case History, disclosed that two Bangladesh-based banks, Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL) and Social Islami Bank Limited (SIBL) were involved in terror financing. Regarding the functioning of HSBC, it was mentioned that the bank acted as a financier to clients seeking to route funds from countries like Mexico, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Myanmar, Japan and Russia. The report also stated that the HSBC supplied dollars to IBBL and SIBL, ignoring evidence of their links to terror financing. HSBC did not submit these two banks to enhanced monitoring for suspicious transactions, despite recommendation by HSBC’s own Financial Intelligence Group (FIG).

According to the document, SIBL’s ownership stakes were held by two Saudi Arabia based non-governmental organizations (NGOs): the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) – implicated in terrorist financing by the U.S. administration and included on the list of those prohibited to do business in the country; and Lajnat-al-Birr-al-Islam (Benevolence International Foundation, BIF), one of al Qaeda’s financers.

It was noted, further, that Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank, also engaged in suspicious transaction, had a 37 per cent ownership in IBBL. HSBC also had maintained an association with Al Rajhi, a member of al Qaeda’s “Golden Chain” – a list including at least 20 top Saudi and Gulf States’ financial sponsors of al Qaeda, including bankers, businessmen, and former ministers.

The U.S. report on terror financing was not a recent finding. Since 9/11, the U.S. has taken strong steps to halt the flow of funds to terrorist organizations under Executive Order 13224 and related elements of the USA Patriotic Act.

The exposure of the unholy nexus between banking establishments and terrorist activities in Bangladesh can be traced back to the watershed country-wide serial bomb blasts on August 17, 2005. 459 explosions had been orchestrated in 63 of the country’s 64 Districts (excluding Munshiganj), killing three persons and injuring 100 others, on that date. After the serial blasts, which were orchestrated by the Jamaat ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), the role of IBBL in promoting religious terror was brought under scrutiny, when Bangladesh Home Ministry constituted a committee to investigate terror financing. Subsequent to the arrest of the JMB ‘chief’ Shaikh Abdur Rahman and his second in command Siddiqui Islam alias Bangla Bhai, and the subsequent seizure of some banking documents, the investigation team documented suspicious transactions with IBBL branches in Sylhet, Gazipur and Savar, where violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act were noticed. The Act which came into existence in 2002 was last amended on June 20, 2011. Rahman and Bangla Bhai were also found to have accounts with IBBL. The two were eventually hanged on March 30, 2007 – Rahman in Comilla Jail and Bangla Bhai in Mymensingh Prison.

RadicalIslam.org interviews Money Jihad

Ryan Mauro recently conducted an interview with Money Jihad which was published yesterday at RadicalIslam.org—a leading news site about the treat posed by Islamic fundamentalism.  We covered a wide range of topics including what laws on terrorist financing are being insufficiently enforced, what countries are funding terrorism, and problems with hawala.

The full Q&A is available here.  Here’s just a taste of our exchange:

Ryan Mauro: What methods are the Islamists using today to raise money, besides soliciting wealthy donors?

Money Jihad: Well, it’s not just about zakat from wealthy donors.  Folks like Amina Farah Ali in Minnesota, Shabaaz Hussain in London, and Irfan Naseer in Birmingham have fundraised for relatively small donations from individual Muslims to support jihad overseas.  A few thousand dollars from the West goes a long way to fund a holy warrior on the ground in Somalia.

But apart from zakat donations, there are a whole host of other Islamic taxes that receive less attention but are huge revenue stream for jihad.  Western reporters call it extortion, but the mujahideen don’t look at it that way.

Take for example two terrorist organizations with a ground game:  Al-Shabaab and the Taliban.  They have fighters on the ground and control definite territory.  Organizations like that rely to a great extent on levying Islamic taxes on the people under their jurisdiction.  The Taliban still gets money from ushr, the Islamic tax on harvests, which includes poppy yields.  Al Shabaab imposes harbor taxes, checkpoint taxes (a practice from the early days of Islam up through Ottoman times), and a zakat on the lucrative Somali charcoal trade.

Ransoms, which are also permitted against infidels by the Koran, are a major revenue source for organizations like AQIM and Abu Sayyaf.  For Hezbollah, the West focuses on their drug money, but they get a lot of money from khums, the Shia Muslim tax on individual profit.

Counterfeiting, Sharia finance, street crimes, welfare fraud — those are all being used as well in different parts of the world to fund terrorism, individual Islamists or both…

Ryan Mauro asked some other great questions during the interview, such as:  “Do you believe that the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S. has stopped financing Hamas since the shutting down of the Holy Land Foundation, deciding to solely focus on political influence instead?”

In addition to serving as the national security analyst for RadicalIslam.org, Mr. Mauro is also a Clarion Fund fellow, the founder of WorldThreats.com, and often appears on the Fox News Channel.  It was a pleasure to be interviewed by him.

Obama’s 10 biggest terror finance blunders

1. Promising to make it easier for Muslims to give zakat.  Pres. Obama has tried to remove the so-called “chilling effect” that George W. Bush, the Patriot Act, the Treasury Department, and law enforcement “created” by closing down Islamic charities that funded terrorism.  Rather than building on the Bush administration’s successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for sponsoring Hamas, Obama won’t prosecute Islamic Relief, he won’t prosecute CAIR, he won’t investigate ISNA or NAIT, and the IRS has been derelict in stripping suspicious Islamic organizations of their tax-exempt status.
2. Funding the Arab Spring that has led to the rise of Muslim Brotherhood dominated governments in the Middle East who behave against U.S. national security interests.
3. Minimizing our energy independence from Middle East oil by reducing oil production on federal lands and waters, rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, impeding hydraulic fracturing permitting, etc.
4. Making little to no progress on bankrupting the Taliban.
5. Dragging his feet in adopting sanctions against Al Qaeda and Taliban affiliates such as the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network.