Oliver asks Commons to hit terrorists in the pocket
Finance Minister Joe Oliver has asked the House of Commons finance committee to launch an investigation into terrorist financing, saying “more can be done” and that recent incidents highlight the threat it poses to Canadians.
In a letter Thursday to committee chairman James Rajotte, Oliver said last week’s disruption of a suspected Islamic State support network in Ottawa “demonstrates that the importance and immediacy of this issue cannot be overstated.”
“As a result, I am requesting that the Standing Committee on Finance, at its earliest convenience, study the cost, economic impact, frequency and best practices to address the issue of terrorist financing both here in Canada and abroad,” reads the letter, obtained by the National Post.
The request comes as Western governments attempt to cripple Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, financially by freezing its assets and encouraging nations to prevent it from moving money. Estimates of the extremist group’s operating budget vary widely, from between a few hundred thousand dollars and $2 billion — much of it derived from black market oil sales.
At a G20 meeting in Istanbul this week, the finance ministers of the world’s most powerful economies agreed to tackle the problem by increasing co-operation and information sharing, as well as freezing assets related to terrorism.
In a joint communiqué, they asked the Financial Action Task Force to “put a specific focus on financing of terrorism” and to prepare a report by October 2015 “on progress made and proposals to strengthen all counter-terrorism financing tools.”
Oliver’s letter said that at the G20 meeting “it was apparent that terrorist financing and proceeds of crime are shared concerns for many countries ... and we must be determined to combat the risk, which has already occurred within our own borders.”
Specifically, he asked the committee to examine: the impact of the flow of illicit funds; how Canada “can be a leader” in freezing terrorist assets and cutting off their sources of funds; how to improve FINTRAC, the federal anti-money laundering agency; and how to cooperate and share information “to confront and degrade the evolving global security threat through an economic and financial lens.”
FINTRAC, which is responsible for detecting suspicious financial transactions in Canada, reported a sharp rise in national security cases last year. Testifying before a Senate committee last October, director Gerald Cossette said the agency had provided 234 such tips to partners in the previous year, up 50 per cent from the year before.
The global crackdown is being driven primarily by international resolve to weaken Islamic State, which has been committing widespread atrocities since seizing swaths of Syria and Iraq in an attempt to spread its violent, puritanical version of Islamic law.
In concert with efforts to attack Islamic State militarily through airstrikes and support for the Iraqi and Kurdish forces, governments have also begun going after its finances, making it more difficult for the group to raise and transfer money.
Last year, Islamic State looted about $500 million from stateowned banks in Iraq, Jennifer Fowler, the U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy assistance secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, said in a Feb. 2 speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Another $20 million came from ransoms paid to secure the release of kidnapping victims, while about $100 million was derived from the sale of oil and oil products to smugglers who sold it to, among others, Syria’s Assad regime, Fowler said.
“Foreign donations represented an important but comparatively smaller source of revenue for ISIL in 2014. However, externally raised funds are used frequently to finance the travel of extremists to Syria and Iraq,” she said.
“Of note, at least 19,000 fighters from more than 90 countries have left their home countries to travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. This pool of international supporters is a source from which ISIL receives both physical and some monetary support.”
Targeting the finances of foreign fighters “could help stem the significant flow” of extremists to Iraq and Syria, she added. The U.S. was also working to encourage Qatar and Kuwait to “prevent terrorist financiers from providing funds to ISIL.”