Firms 'pay protection money to terrorists'
A variety of companies pay terrorists to be left alone, it was reported today.
They include oil operations in South America, Angola and Nigeria, timber exploiters in south east Asia and some airlines in the Middle East, according to the latest edition of respected US magazine Forbes Global.
Until recently even a Jewish-owned bank was paying Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based group, it adds.
The claim is made by a former intelligence officer based in Europe, now a business consultant, the magazine says.
And it quotes an executive in the financial division of a state-owned oil company in southern Europe as saying donating money to Islamic groups is simply a cost of doing business in the Middle East.
He said: ‘‘I have been more and more worried about these transactions over the last seven or eight years, because friends in our government’s secret service have told me that a number of these intermediaries have direct links to terrorist organisations.’’
The magazine set eight reporters to work analysing the funding of Islamic terror organisations.
It concluded that Osama bin Laden, the man thought to be behind the atrocities in the US on September 11, earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year from activities both legal and illegal.
Al-Qaida, the umbrella organisation he helped establish in Afghanistan 12 years ago, employs 3,000 civilians and 2,000 armed troops, and operates communications equipment, training bases and safe houses around the world, which are used by Muslim extremists from Egypt to the Philippines, it says.
It quotes Frank Cilluffo, of the Centre for Strategic & International Studies, a think-tank in Washington DC, as saying: ‘‘I look at bin Laden as the chief financial officer of a very loose coalition of radicals. It’s not a monolithic, hierarchical organisation. But he is the glue that holds these groups together with money, training and support.’’
He has financed his terror network in a variety of ways including the proceeds from his inheritance of up to £42m, it says.
And money comes from:
:: Drugs - Al-Qaida skims a cut of Afghanistan’s heroin exports, based on the organisation’s needs, and drug enforcement officials estimate it has stockpiled opium worth £1.4bn at today’s prices.
Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption in New York, says: ‘‘They are selling it in Russia and Europe. It’s the main source of terrorism funding, and they are using legitimate sources to cover it up - groceries, fruit stands, garages.’’
:: Stocks ‘‘Our indications are that bin Laden seems to play the stock market’’, says Duane Clarridge, former chief of CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.
:: Charities In the US alone, charitable groups raise from $10-15m a year for Islamic movements and militant organisations, estimates Steven Emerson, a researcher in Washington DC.
:: Direct investments Bin Laden spent part of his inheritance on establishing a variety of businesses in Sudan - a trading company, a construction company and a foreign exchange company. He also controls an Islamic bank and a majority stake in a large gum Arabic plantation, most of whose output is exported to France, yielding as much as £71m a year.
Intelligence gatherers track the financial dealings but the magazine warns that when funds move digitally they will be more difficult to follow.
David Mussington, senior scientist at RAND, in Arlington, Virginia, says: ‘‘They will be using cybertechnology, smart cards and internet fund transfers and moving to offshore internet banks. These are tools that will help bin Laden keep his financial activities secret. It will be more difficult to trace these people - and it already is difficult.’’
The magazine in another article also explores how new technology can spy on terrorists - and others - in a crowd.
It says many tools for identifying terrorists, monitoring their movements, eavesdropping on their phone calls and cracking their e-mails already exist.
Facial recognition software can match a person’s face against a database of wanted individuals, while iris-scanning cameras confirm identity by checking the pulse inside the eyeball.
Tiny, high-resolution digital cameras will become ubiquitous as prices fall below $100, it says.
Flying 16km high, a new unmanned spy plane will capture moving images as never before possible.
And at airport check-ins, pioneering ‘‘sniffing’’ technology will detect explosives in traces as tiny as billionths of a gram.
It all raises the question of how far we are prepared to lose privacy in the cause of fighting the terrorists, the magazine notes.
