Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering, and Tax Evasion

Using the Balanced Scorecard method for assessment, this book explores the effectiveness of a government's financial intelligence units in combating terrorist financing. It explores the large-scale misuse of funds to commit financial crimes, describes how easy it is for criminals, and reviews the inter-jurisdictional problems involved.

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Tracking funding is a critical part of the fight against terrorism and as the threat has escalated, so has the development of financial intelligence units (FIUs) designed to investigate suspicious transactions. Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering, and Tax Evasion: Examining the Performance of Financial Intelligence Units provides a thorough analysis of the financing phenomenon from the raising of funds to government agencies’ efforts to interdict them to measuring and monitoring the outcomes of these efforts.

This volume begins by presenting deep-rooted conflicts in the Middle East, the United States, the Indian subcontinent, Northern Ireland, and South America that have led to modern terrorism. It describes recent developments in counterterrorism and discusses the next steps in intelligence reform. Next, the author discusses how financial crime is committed, examining the source of funds from money laundering and tax evasion among others, and the transfer of these funds. He then covers performance and risk management, and the process of measuring performance using the balanced scorecard method. The book presents an overview of anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing initiatives in several regions around the globe: the European Union, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa. It concludes with a survey of experts’ opinions on the efficacy of current programs and recommendations for improving government performance in countering terrorist financing and related money laundering and tax evasion.

Knowing what to target and how to measure results are essential for performance enhancement in preventing and interdicting financial criminal activity. Establishing the need for accurate assessment of the success and failure of FIUs, the book demonstrates how monitoring and measuring progress is a crucial part of financial interdiction efforts in the fight against terrorism.