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Funding and Banking ISIS
June 20th, 2014
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS for short, recently became the world’s wealthiest terrorist organizations. In fact, with an estimated net worth of $2 billion, according to the International Business Times, ISIS may have more cash than the gross domestic product of several small countries including Gibraltar, the Virgin Islands, and Palau. ISIS has achieved this feat in a relatively short time span. Over the last few years, ISIS has made a lot of money in some traditional avenues: mainly through activities like plundering, pillaging, and extortion. ISIS has also gained controlled several...
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Using Banking to Tackle Colombia’s Cocaine Problem
June 9th, 2014
Late last month, during peace negotiations in Cuba, Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist rebel army organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (also known as FARC) signed an agreement with the Colombia government to jointly combat illicit drugs. This is a relatively surprising accord, since many analysts believe FARC receives significant funding from this very trade. Estimates place FARC’s proceeds from the cocaine trade in Colombia around $500 to $600 million annually, mainly through a “tax” FARC places on coca farmers and their coordination of the cocaine smuggling networks. Under the agreement last month, however, FARC agreed that it would completely...
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The Noble, but Impossible, Task before the Ukraine Forum on Asset Recovery
May 30th, 2014
Photo courtesy of Flickr user DeepstereoLast week Ukrainians cast their ballots for a new president. It was the first election for the position since the nation ousted its allegedly-corrupt former President, Viktor Yanukovych. Before he fled to Russia, Yanukovych lived on 340 acres of land on the banks of the river Dnieper in Ukraine. His former home, a five story mansion named Mezhyhiriya, is decorated with marble, crystal, and precious woods. It is difficult to overstate the luxury of this palatial building. Its cedar doors are worth $64,000, the wall...
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Beyond Banking: Financing Terrorism with Bitcoin
May 27th, 2014
While we still have a long way to go, the last decade has made it much harder for terrorists to hide money from authorities.  About fifteen years ago, an article in the Washington Post argued Osama bin Laden was able to “shroud his finances in such secrecy and with so many front companies that American officials acknowledge it could take years to decipher them.”  At the time, U.S. officials understood that the key to bin Laden’s power was his extensive wealth.  Yet they were stymied in their ability to track his or other terrorists’ resources as they did not have...
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