1st Edition

Threat Finance Disconnecting the Lifeline of Organised Crime and Terrorism

By Shima D. Keene Copyright 2012

    Criminal and terrorist organisations are increasingly turning to white collar crime such as fraud, e-crime, bribery, data and identity theft, in addition to more violent activities involving kidnap and ransom, narcotics and arms trafficking, to fund their activities and, in some cases pursue their cause. The choice of victims is global and indiscriminate. The modus operandi is continually mutating and increasing in sophistication; taking advantage of weaknesses in the system whether they be technological, legal or political. Countering these sources of threat finance is a shared challenge for governments, the military, NGOs, financial institutions and other businesses that may be targeted. Shima Keene’s Threat Finance offers new thinking to equip any organisation regardless of sector and geographical location, with the knowledge and tools to deploy effective counter measures to tackle the threat. To that end, she brings together a wide variety of perspectives - cultural, legal, economic and technological - to explain the sources, mechanisms and key intervention methodologies. The current environment continues to favour the criminal and the terrorist. Threat Finance is an essential read for fraud and security practitioners, financial regulators, policy-makers, intelligence officials, judges and barristers, law enforcement officers, and researchers in this field. Dr Keene offers an antidote to the lack of good, applied, research; shortcomings in in-house financial and forensic expertise; misdirected financial compliance schemes; legal and judicial idiosyncrasies; unhelpful organisation structures and poor communication. She argues convincingly for a coherent, aggressive, informed and cross-disciplinary approach to an ever changing and rapidly growing threat.

    Contents: Introduction; Understanding the threat environment; Emerging threats: security and legal challenges in the cyber environment; Terrorist finance; Mechanisms of illicit funds transfer; Money laundering; Key methods of intervention; Addressing key challenges; Conclusions and the way forwards; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Shima Keene is a security advisor and scholar practitioner specialising in Threat Finance, advising and working closely with numerous government and law enforcement agencies around the globe. She is a former investment banker, corporate strategist and soldier. Between 2004 and 2008, Shima Keene was based at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom where she developed the concept of asymmetric financial warfare. More recently she was Special Advisor to the MoD responsible for the development of Fin COIN strategies in Afghanistan. Dr Keene is currently the Director of the Threat Finance Programme at the Institute for Statecraft, London and is a visiting lecturer at several academic institutions where she lectures in Terrorism, Financial Crime, International Criminal Law, Security Risk Management and Maritime Piracy. She also serves as an Expert Witness to the Crown Prosecution Service on matters relating to the financial aspects of organised crime and terrorism.

    ’Dr Shima Keene has shed fresh light on and deepened our understanding of a subject critical to international security. Despite broad consensus that countering the finance of organized crime and terrorism represents both a vital requirement and a tremendous opportunity, few understand the nature of the problem or how to act against it. Keene’s comprehensive, accessible, and compelling book should be the new standard text on the subject for policymakers, intelligence officials, law enforcement officers, and anyone responsible for combating terrorist organizations and transnational organized crime networks. Dr Keene’s recommendations for improving financial intelligence, developing comprehensive counter-finance methods, adapting law enforcement organizations, and crafting options to target criminal and terrorist financial streams should be adopted with urgency. Dr. Keene argues that improving understanding of the basic concepts of terrorist and criminal finance is essential; reading her book is an excellent starting point in that connection. Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, former commander of Task Force Shafafiyat (Transparency) in Afghanistan 'This book provides a lucid education on the often inconvenient realities of serious economic crime and identifies with clinical precision the reasons why it sometimes seems beyond the practical capabilities of the law to deal with it. What makes it so important, however, is Dr Keene’s ability to mobilise the difficult thoughts that need to be thought if modern democracy is to survive the corruptive threats of crime and terror and their ability at the more sophisticated levels to exploit the modern accommodations of international finance and cyberspace with apparent impunity. The challenge, so vividly described here, can appear overwhelming; but the lasting influence left by this seminal work is the conviction that it will be more adequately met if some of the current cosy thinking on this subject in relev