December 23, 2015
The increasing actions of terrorists and terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida, ISIL, and their respective affiliates and groups, as demonstrated by recent terrorist acts in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, and France, and the proliferation of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), pose a serious threat to international peace and security. The Egmont Group is committed to capitalising on its unique global network. The Egmont Group recently produced an in-depth analytic study on terrorist financing by ISIL Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF). This project comprised of 40 participating Egmont member FIUs that enabled the sharing of actionable operational intelligence related to FTFs traveling to the conflict zone in Iraq and Syria to support ISIL.
The participating FIUs were able to connect networks of FTF financial facilitators across jurisdictions, use shared information to identify new trends, and develop new investigative leads for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. To alert and educate the banks and financial institutions throughout the world, many participating FIUs shared the financing methods discovered through this project with their private sector financial industries. The project also identified challenges and barriers to information sharing and has made recommendations to the Egmont Group and the FATF how these issues could be tackled.