Wildlife smuggling is big business

The illegal wildlife trade could become as big as the drug trade, according to this recent Seeker Stories video:

Kenya puts al-Shabaab on sugar-free diet

Kenya is tightening the screws against the multi-million sugar smuggling business that profits al-Shabaab across the border in Somalia.  (See here and here for prior coverage of al-Shabaab’s sugar business.)  The surprising thing about this report is the quotation from a security source who described the crackdown by saying, “It’s like the government is awakening.”  Money Jihad believed that the Kenyan government was one of the few entities that have taken the threat of al-Shabaab seriously, and that they have taken steps before to reduce the flow of money to the terror group over the past several years.  Whatever the case, it would be more significant if the Gulf states, which are some of the biggest buyers of Somali contraband, joined Kenya on operations like this.  But don’t hold your breath for that.

From Midnimo last month (h/t El Grillo):

Somalia: Kenya wages war on smugglers who fund Somali Islamist militants

When Kenyan police arrested six men in the vast Dadaab refugee camp near the Somali border last April, their ultimate aim was to dismantle a decades-old sugar smuggling trade that is funding Somali militants waging war on Kenya.

The arrests, coming weeks after four al Shabaab gunmen massacred 148 people at nearby Garissa university, were part of Nairobi’s new strategy to choke off the flow of money to Islamists whose cross-border raids have hammered Kenya and its tourism industry.

While cash from sugar smuggling may amount to only a few million dollars, experts say such sums are enough for attacks that need just a few assault rifles, transport and loyalists ready to die – such as the Garissa raid or the 2013 assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall that killed 67 people.

“It’s like the government is awakening,” said a senior Kenyan security source from Garissa region, adding the authorities had previously often “turned a blind eye to all these things because a lot of people were benefiting – but at a cost of security.”

However if a lasting impact is to be secured more must be done, say security and diplomatic sources. That includes rooting out corruption in the police force and going after smuggling cartel bosses as well as the middle men detained so far.

The move to tackle the cross-border trade may prove as vital as the military offensive against al Shabaab inside Somalia by African Union peacekeepers and Somali soldiers that has pushed the group into smaller pockets of territory…

30 sugar smugglers ID’d as al-Shabaab financiers

Money Jihad readers may recall that Kenya recently sanctioned 86 people and 13 money transfer companies for their financial ties to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. It has since been revealed that 30 of the sanctioned individuals are sugar smugglers. (Hat tips to Chris Pariso and El Grillo.)

The Star reports:

…A confidential government report seen by the Star says: “Most of the smuggled sugar enters the country [Kenya] from areas controlled by al Shabaab in Somalia. The sugar barons pay illegal levies (or protection fees) to al Shabaab, who in turn uses the proceeds to fund terrorist activities/operations…

Imposing taxes on businesses is a common al-Shabaab tactic. They do it on the charcoal supply chain, the telecommunications sector, the remittance industry, etc.  Sugar and charcoal tax rates are often based on the rate set for zakat in the Koran:  2½ percent.  Money Jihad has previously covered how lucrative the sugar trade has been for al-Shabaab here.

ISIS oil smuggling routes visualized

It’s not easy to depict the movement of terrorists’ money on maps. But the folks at Geopolitical Atlas have taken a good stab at it with respect to black market oil routes operated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Their map illustrates how ISIS territory, Syrian and Iraqi oil fields, ISIS-controlled highways, and porous borders with neighboring sympathizers overlap:

Hat tip to @skinroller for sending this over.

IRA surviving on tobacco fumes

Two ex-IRA members have been arrested in the Canary Islands for a money laundering scheme involving at least 10 million euros. Like other IRA has-beens, the culprits seem to have shifted from crimes for a cause to crimes for profit. Or is the IRA’s “next generation” building a nest egg for a comeback?

Hat tip to El Grillo from Agence France-Presse last month:

Two ex-IRA members arrested in Spain for smuggling

Madrid (AFP) – Two former members of the Irish Republican Army were arrested in Spain during a sweep on an alleged tobacco and alcohol smuggling racket, police said Monday.

A Spanish police spokesman told AFP the ex-IRA members arrested for heading the network were Leonard Hardy, 53, and his wife Donna Maria Elizabeth Hardy, 48, both of whom were convicted of a 1989 bombing of a British army barracks in Germany.

The couple was arrested in Lanzarote on the Canary Islands on December 29 with five accomplices as part of coordinated sweeps in Las Palmas, Alicante, Malaga and Murcia, a police statement said.

“They led an organisation smuggling tobacco and alcohol, and laundered money through the acquisition of buildings,” the statement said, adding that an estimated 10.5 million euros ($12.5 million) worth of real estate had been involved.

High Court judge Pablo Ruz charged the couple with money laundering, smuggling and the funding of terrorism linked to the IRA, a judicial source said.

He ordered that Leonard Hardy be jailed while the investigation continued while the wife was released under judicial supervision so she could look after the couple’s children in Britain, the source added.

Spanish officials froze additional property assets worth more than 5.5 million euros ($6.5 million), and 90 bank accounts and investment portfolios in Spain…

Outfoxing jihadi financiers: news reading tips

• American banks have begun breaking off their old love affair with Arab banks… more>>

• A Democrat congressman recently planned to speak at an event with a Taliban fundraiser… more>>

• Too often, organized smuggling networks simply aren’t prosecuted… more>>

• A Pakistani boatload of terrorists self-detonated off India’s waters. Most Indian media and officials agree that a terrorist plot was foiled in the process, except for the Indian Express which claimed the offenders were just petty smugglers. A blogger carefully dismantles the Indian Express’s version of events… more>>

$1 million in Afghan smuggling a day

A hundred million Pakistani rupees (roughly 1 million USD) worth of merchandise is smuggled out of Afghanistan through the Afghan Trade Transit (ATT) corridor with Pakistan every day according to check-post and customs officials. In their 2010 book On the Trail of Terror Finance, John Cassara and Avi Jorisch wrote that the ATT “has resulted in massive smuggling and trade fraud, and it continues to facilitate the laundering of narcotics proceeds that help finance the Taliban.” ATT smuggling serves as another arrow in the Taliban’s quiver as U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan draws down.

From Customs Today:

Smuggling of Rs 100m carried out daily thru Afghan Transit route: sources

Reported by: Sohail Rab December 25, 2014

KARACHI: The smuggling of around Rs 100 million is being carried out daily through Afghan Transit Trade (ATT), it was learnt here.

The highly informed sources while sharing their views with Customs Today have disclosed that 95 percent of smuggling of goods including tiles, diesel, cloths, tea, tyres and others is being carried out through Afghan Transit Trade.

The sources revealed that ‘Sheela Bagh’ check-post near Chaman border is among one of the burning spots where the smuggled goods are being transported to Quetta and then Karachi while the smuggled goods are also being loaded on the retrograde containers on returning from Afghanistan near ‘Waish’ Border.

They further disclosed that the smugglers have strong nexus with the security personnel of Frontier Constabulary (FC) and Customs officials at different check-posts and the biltee of smuggled consignments under the smugglers’ name is being cleared from different check-posts easily without any checking.

The sources claimed that 60per cent of smuggling would be curtailed, if strict surveillance and vigilance would be conducted at ‘Sheela Bagh check-post near Chaman Border. They further recommended the authorities concerned of FBR to form joint examination teams comprising of the personnel of Pakistan Customs, Coast Guards and Rangers at National Highway, RCD and Superhighway in order to eliminate smuggling of goods. They further said that the Quetta to Karachi Bus Terminal and Northern Bypass are two more “deliberately” vulnerable spots where the smuggled goods are easily coming into Karachi…

Mosul physician says ISIS profits from organ trade

Arab surgeons have moved into Mosul to remove patients’ organs for follow-on black market resale according to an Iraqi ear, nose, and throat doctor interviewed by Al-Monitor.  Al-Monitor characterizes organ trafficking as one of several funding sources for the Islamic State, and reports that revenues are “allocated to local and foreign fighters, to encourage them to join up and continue fighting.”  Hat tip to El Grillo:

…The third funding source was exposed by otolaryngologist Siruwan al-Mosuli. He said that lately he noticed unusual movement within medical facilities in Mosul. Arab and foreign surgeons were hired, but prohibited from mixing with local doctors. Information then leaked about organ selling. Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are quickly transported through networks specialized in trafficking human organs. Mosuli said that the organs come from fallen fighters who were quickly transported to the hospital, injured people who were abandoned or individuals who were kidnapped.

He said that organ sales yield large profits. A specialized mafia is engaged in these operations, in addition to medical institutions working in other countries. Without coordination among these parties, such a trade cannot be sustained, he said. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the organization sells bodies and organs of injured people they arrest…

Organ trafficking has also been used as a fundraising technique by Hamas, “Arab gangs,” and Kosovo terrorists.

New moves afoot to choke off terror money

• The U.S. takes aim at ISIS’s black market oil buyers… more>>

• Britain grants more powers to its charity regulator, including the power to remove dubious trustees from charitable boards (h/t @ConorMLarkin)… more>>

• Austrian law will ban foreign funding of imams… more>>

• The U.S. Rewards for Justice program of paying informants is still helping catch and kill terrorists… more>>

• Bulk cash smugglers beware–there’s a new system to detect the presence of excessive currency at border checkpoints… more>>

Terror payola news: recommended reading

• 300 plaintiffs would have their health or loved ones back if it hadn’t been for Arab Bank and the money they handled for Hamas, a jury finds… more>>

• Qatar gave $15 million to the institute that keeps a key U.S. negotiator for peace in the Middle East on its payroll.  The summary in Latin is quid pro quo… more>>
  (h/t Europe News)

• The smoke clears on the history of Hezbollah‘s cigarette smuggling in North Carolina with the publication of Lightning out of Lebanon… more>>
  (hat tip El Grillo)

• The Israel-Gaza rocket war was triggered by a $61.5K contract killing of three Israeli teenagers ordered by Hamas… more>>

• Treasury’s top authority on the subject says, “Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally, has for many years openly financed Hamas”… more>>

• On Hamas’s recent bank robbery of $750,000 from the Bank of Palestine in Gaza City… more>>
  (h/t El Grillo)

• Ukraine lists 172 Russian citizens & 65 Russian companies to be sanctioned “for financing terrorism”… more>>

 

Antiquities smuggling funds terrorism

Haqqani network leader describes $3,000 cut from smuggler

Not only does the theft of artifacts from Middle Eastern tombs, museums, and archeological sites rob the world of its history, but it funds jihadists across the globe including militants in Afghanistan and sleeper cell operatives in the West.

This is an excerpt from a National Geographic article (h/t El Grillo) last month:

…In 1999, Mohamed Atta, the al Qaeda member who hijacked and flew an American Airlines plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, tried to sell Afghan antiquities to a German university professor. Atta, according to information released by the German intelligence agency, claimed that he was selling artifacts in order to purchase an airplane.

More recently, an American expert on Afghan trafficking networks has uncovered a direct link between Afghan insurgents and the antiquities trade. In a report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Gretchen Peters, a senior fellow on transnational crime at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, describes how a terrorist organization known as the Haqqani Network—which is allied with al Qaeda—collects protection money from traffickers moving looted artifacts into Pakistan.

In an interview conducted by Peters’s research assistant, a Haqqani commander described receiving a $3,000 payment from a trader, and noted that many “businessmen who smuggle precious stone, sculptures, and other historic artifacts … pay dues to the Taliban to avoid trouble on the road.” These funds can then be used to purchase weapons.

Violent factions in Iraq also appear to be cashing in on the illicit antiquities trade. In 2007, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, head of the investigation into the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, reported that insurgents turned to artifact smuggling to generate funds after the world banking community froze assets belonging to their supporters…

Shariah Finance Watch has some related information funding terrorism through smuggling in Iraq and Syria here.