Recent military setbacks have diminished the Islamic State's control over local populations, natural resources and cultural antiquities in Iraq and Syria, raising the possibility that the group may turn to drug trafficking and other criminal schemes to generate revenue, say sources.
Proposed legislation that would enable the White House to impose economic penalties on governments that turn a blind eye to terror financiers is gaining bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate.
For an indication of how difficult it can be to identify terrorism funding, even for federal investigators, read the previously-classified 28 pages of a congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks.
U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled a legislative package that would expand interbank data-sharing under the Patriot Act and grant federal officials new resources to identify assets linked to terrorist organizations.
In an ideal world for compliance officers, the finances of individuals plotting mass casualty attacks would exhibit enough anomalies to draw attention to their plans before they could carry them out, assuming such plans were made at all.
Among the many challenges of identifying terrorist funds is the fact that they can be hidden in plain sight, according to Colin P. Clarke, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation who studies the subject.
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