For several years I have led the charge in Congress to take international drug traffickers and their sophisticated money laundering schemes to the cleaners. For too long they’ve rinsed their tainted money through the U.S. banking system. But drug dealers and mafia leaders aren’t the only ones gaming the financial system for their criminal advantage. Terrorists and their bankrolling sympathizers are making a mockery out of legitimate financial institutions and the federal tax code. And now they’re giving tax-exempt charitable organizations a black eye.
Money laundering is the war industry of terrorists. A behind-the-scenes tool that helps finance sinister acts against the innocent. The highly publicized military, diplomatic and intelligence efforts now underway to quash terrorist cells in Afghanistan and elsewhere are only part of the equation in the war on terrorism.
But another critical counterterrorism measure also requires savvy investigators, coordination among private and public sector officials and cooperation with our international allies to trace the money trail, figure out the terrorists’ financial network and destroy it. Without funding, terrorists wouldn’t have the means to train, orchestrate and execute evildoing. Financial partners play a silent but central role among terrorist regimes. A complex, covert financing system allows terrorist groups to build up their operations, train recruits, plot acts of terror and spread fear and evil around the globe.
Now, evidence shows that terrorist sympathizers will try and do anything to raise money for their cause. Hiding behind charities as fronts, these fund-raisers for terror are preying on the generosity of charitable Americans. Osama bin Laden may portray the face of evil, but the faceless financiers who fund his organization serve as the engines who transform his rhetoric into death and destruction around the world. These financial engines must be shut down.
Take the indictment of a leader of an Illinois-based charity organization. In October the director of the Benevolence International Foundation was charged with "conspiracy to obtain fraudulently charitable donations in order to provide financial assistance to Al Qaeda and other organizations engaged in violence and terrorism."
It’s morally corrupt to exploit hard-earned, goodwill donations and launder the money to finance terrorism. I’m working to shut off the spigot that is allowing charitable donations to flow through fraudulent tax-exempt organizations into the hands of the likes of Osama bin Laden. In October, I testified before the Senate Banking Committee on the need for a strong, clear national strategy against money laundering. We are not going to succeed in this effort overnight. We need to have a strategy that will allow us not only to halt the financing of terrorists today, but one that searches the horizon for methods and mechanisms that could be used to fund terror in the future.
I also introduced bipartisan legislation to suspend the tax-exempt status of designated terrorist organizations, providing another tool to shut down this war industry. And I questioned federal investigators appearing before the Senate Finance Committee about the tools they have or may need to continue to identify and shut down terror-financing schemes.
Since the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Washington has rushed to freeze the assets of terrorists and identify the sophisticated means being used to finance terror. Progress has been made. Much of the low-hanging fruit has been picked and now comes the hard part. Because much of the financing for terrorist operations can be disguised as legitimate until the terror event occurs, tracking terrorist financing is like searching for one needle in a haystack of needles. But it’s a search that must continue.
Tougher laws and better enforcement is necessary to beat money launderers at their own game. I want to see to it that terrorist financiers aren’t allowed to misuse the federal tax code and swindle legitimate donors for hateful purposes. As the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, I’ll continue to push for bipartisan solutions in the war on terror. That includes initiatives aimed at drying up the revenue stream that feeds terrorist organizations and allows them to operate virtually anywhere in the world. It’s time to hang money laundering out to dry once and for all.