(Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD),
"Report on Money Laundering Typologies 1999-2000," Financial Action
Task Force, FATF-XI, February 3, 2000, at
http://www.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/TY2000_en.pdf )
Hawala networks closely feed into Islamic banks throughout the world
and to commodity trading in South Asia. There are more than 200
Islamic banks in the USA alone and many thousands in Europe, North
and South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states (especially in the
free zone of Dubai and in Bahrain), Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia,
and other South East Asian countries. By the end of 1998, the overt
(read: tip of the iceberg) liabilities of these financial
institutions amounted to 148 billion US dollars. They dabbled in
equipment leasing, real estate leasing and development, corporate
equity, and trade/structured trade and commodities financing
(usually in consortia called "Mudaraba").
While previously confined to the Arab peninsula and to south and
east Asia, this mode of traditional banking became truly
international in the 1970's, following the unprecedented flow of
wealth to many Moslem nations due to the oil shocks and the
emergence of the Asian tigers. Islamic banks joined forces with
corporations, multinationals, and banks in the West to finance oil
exploration and drilling, mining, and agribusiness. Many leading law
firms in the West (such as Norton Rose, Freshfields, Clyde and Co.
and Clifford Chance) have "Islamic Finance" teams which are familiar
with Islam-compatible commercial contracts.
II. HAWALA AND TERRORISM
Recent anti-terrorist legislation in the US and the UK allows
government agencies to regularly supervise and inspect businesses
that are suspected of being a front for the ''Hawala'' banking
system, makes it a crime to smuggle more than $10,000 in cash across
USA borders, and empowers the Treasury secretary (and its Financial
Crimes Enforcement Network - FinCEN) to tighten record-keeping and
reporting rules for banks and financial institutions based in the
USA. A new inter-agency Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center
(FTAT) was set up. A 1993 moribund proposed law requiring US-based
Halawadar to register and to report suspicious transactions may be
revived. These relatively radical measures reflect the belief that
the al-Qaida network of Osama bin Laden uses the Hawala system to
raise and move funds across national borders. A Hawaladar in
Pakistan (Dihab Shill) was identified as the financier in the
attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
But the USA is not the only country to face terrorism financed by
Hawala networks.
A few months ago, the Delhi police, the Indian government's
Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the Military Intelligence (MI)
arrested six Jammu Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF) terrorists. The
arrests led to the exposure of an enormous web of Hawala
institutions in Delhi, aided and abetted, some say, by the ISI
(Inter Services Intelligence, Pakistan's security services).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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