WASHINGTON : World financial powers tried to spur action against terrorist financing networks, even as much of the illicit money flow headed deeper underground.
"We reviewed what we are doing. We reviewed what we could be doing better," Treasury Secretary John Snow told a news conference after meeting with Group of Seven partners from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
"The terrorists cannot function without the blood money," he said, and the G7, along with other countries, was "doing everything possible to interdict those flows."
But "our progress with the formal financial system has driven these flows into the informal networks of courriers and hawalas (informal systems for making transfers) and through charities."
The United States says 139 million dollars in terrorist financing has been frozen worldwide, of which 112 million had been frozen in the first year after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Last December, a US Congressional report said the US government did not know the full extent of secret operations used by terrorist groups to raise money and had trouble keeping up with their fast-changing tactics.
Group of Seven members discussed the crackdown Friday with a dozen countries: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, and United Arab Emirates,
"The fight against terrorism is our common fight and we encourage all nations to participate fully in the international effort to choke off its financing," the G7 said in a statement.
"The recent tragedies in Madrid and Riyadh show clearly that we cannot relax our vigilance and must not slacken our resolve or our efforts to combat this scourge."
Five people were killed April 22 by a car bomb that targeted a security forces building in Riyadh.
Train bombings in Madrid on March 11 killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 in Spain's worst terrorist attack.
"As international financial leaders, we have special responsibilities for the domestic and multilateral fight against terrorist financing and for protecting the integrity of the global financial system," the G7 said.
"We have made significant progress in this struggle, but much more needs to be done."
The G7 welcomed IMF and World Bank decisions to make comprehensive assessments of countries' compliance with the recognized anti-terrorist financing and anti-money laundering standards as part of their regular activities.
"We urge more capacity building through technical assistance to shore up identified gaps in the regimes to fight terrorism finance and money laundering," it said.
Cash represented one of the widest gaps.
"We recognize the danger posed by terrorist financiers using cash couriers or transferring cash across borders and undertake to combat this growing threat by strengthening the control of cross-border cash movements," the industrialized countries said.
"We pledge our best efforts to keep terrorists from raising, holding, transferring, or using financial assets to carry out their inhumane acts."
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/81743/1/.html
