'Jump teams' hot on Al-Qaeda's money trail
Kevin McCoy (USA Today)
Tuesday, Sep 11
In the military fight against Osama bin Laden and terrorism, the United States is relying on special operations commandos.
To track terrorists' money, Washington is deploying what it calls financial "jump teams."
US investigative accountants, bank examiners and other agents are working overseas to target businesses, charities and individuals suspected of financing bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
"We contact the local government and say we want to send in a jump team to look at the bank accounts," Treasury General Counsel David Aufhauser says. If a government doesn't agree, "we cut off that institution" from the US financial system, he says.
For financial firms everywhere, having access to US banks and the ability to trade in US dollars — the globe's dominant currency — are crucial to survival. In at least two recent cases involving accounts of charities or businesses, US financial agents found it necessary to use such a threat, says Aufhauser, who for security reasons declined to identify the nations involved.
As US military forces in Afghanistan move to consolidate an uneasy victory, the jump teams' efforts and other US strategies indicate that the international war on terrorists' finances is likely to go on for years. Last week, officials from the Treasury and State departments, the FBI and the National Security Council began trips to Saudi Arabia and Europe with the goal of freezing additional suspicious bank accounts and examining charities suspected of funding terrorism.
Operation Green Quest — a team of investigators from the Internal Revenue Service, Customs Service, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Secret Service and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — is examining credit-card, insurance and coupon frauds that investigators say also could be funding pipelines to Al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, US investigators are stepping up plans to go to 40 nations that have sought technical expertise in identifying and freezing potential terrorist funds.
The jump teams symbolize the activity on the largely unseen financial battleground. Providing the first detailed descriptions of the teams, Treasury officials say they consist of six to 12 members trained to spot money-laundering techniques, accounting frauds, drug schemes and other tactics authorities say have been Al-Qaeda's fundraising methods.
The teams, staffed by experts drawn from the IRS and other Treasury agencies, spend about a week on each assignment, Aufhauser says. Each job is coordinated with the State Department.
Working with Washington, United Nations officials are discussing plans to form similar, multinational teams charged with enforcing the United Nation's calls for member countries to freeze terrorists' assets.
Other strategies being studied include denying foreign banks access to the US banking system if they have balked at international demands for stricter money-laundering safeguards — even if there's only limited evidence that accounts at the institutions are linked to Al-Qaeda.
Measuring the financial war's progress is difficult because much of the information involved is classified. But Jimmy Gurule, Treasury's undersecretary for enforcement, says seizures of cash being smuggled out of the USA have jumped because of a crackdown launched after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. More than $6.2 million has been seized at US borders, the Customs Service says.
"What we're hearing from the intelligence community is that the war against terrorist financing is having a significant impact" on terrorists' ability to move money, Gurule says.
Federal investigators also point to what they call unprecedented cooperation from US banks and other financial institutions. One Treasury official says he was surprised by the change in a banker who had questioned tougher federal regulation of the industry. In a public-private task force session held after Sept. 11, the banker proposed tougher rules, the Treasury official says.
Even so, others describe potentially significant shortcomings in the financial attack. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network lacks the staff to analyze each of the thousands of suspicious activity reports that banks file annually, says Patrick Jost, a former Treasury official.
Jost adds that US regulators should train banking employees nationwide to spot signs of unusual transactions such as those used by hawalas, the South Asian money-transfer networks that operate largely without paper records. "This is a major step," says Jost, who now is with SRA International, an information technology consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va.
"I'm not suggesting that... Al-Qaeda is unable to move money," Gurule says. "But it's more risky for them now than it was before."
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