A group of witnesses stood before members of the Financial Services Task Force to Investigate Terror Financing this week and said that despite the efforts of international regulatory bodies and other entities, no central body effectively counteracts terrorist financing.
During the hearing, the lack of consistency and cooperation between agencies and other organizations involved in counterterrorism repeatedly came up as a grave concern.
Another key concern is that no central techniques or guidelines exist that would unify procedures for stopping the financing of such international terrorist organizations.
“Throughout the lifetime of this task force, one fact has remained consistent: combating terror finance is and must continue to be an international effort,” Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), the chairman of the Task Force, said. “The countries of today’s world are more interconnected than they have ever been before – especially when focusing on the financial system and the global trade system. With this much integration, the weakest link in the system becomes the target for exploitation by criminal organizations and terrorist groups.
One of the other takeaways from the hearing was that the United State and other members of the international community have begun to send assistance to developing countries so they may strengthen their financial, law enforcement and legal systems in order to better prevent the spread financing of terrorism and criminal activity.
“Given their weaker institutional capacities and systems, it is perhaps inevitable that developing countries, particularly lower-income developing countries, would become preferred targets for criminal and terrorist actors,” James Adams, a former vice president of the East Asia and Pacific region at the World Bank, said. “Gaps in bank supervision capacities and weak technical skills make these countries attractive targets; moreover governance and corruption issues within government bureaucracies can often undermine even the efforts of honest governments in these areas.”