Terrorist Bank Deals Seen As "Impossible To Spot", page 1

Four years of intensive U.S.-led efforts to starve terrorist groups of funds have brought home the harsh truth that banks are virtually powerless to spot terrorists solely on the basis of their financial dealings, bankers, regulators and experts say. While more stringent checks, introduced after the September 11 attacks in 2001, have made it harder for groups like al Qaeda to move money around, the chances of uncovering a cell through suspicious transactions alone are seen as next to nothing.

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"Terrorist operatives are often nearly impossible to detect from their financial transactions because these financial transactions look utterly routine," Douglas Greenburg, a member of the 9/11 commission that investigated the attacks, told a European conference organized by specialist publication Money Laundering Alert in Spain this week.

Two weeks after the suicide hijack attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, President George W. Bush announced moves to freeze the assets of militant groups worldwide in "a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network."

The goal, he said, was "to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions."

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It is extremely worrying to know that terrorists the world over are freely moving money about under our very noses and we cannot do a thing about it!

Although i would love governments to be able to starve the terrorists, i understand how hard it must be to track transactions between them when we dont even know who half of them are!

[edit on 3-10-2005 by DJDOHBOY]