Purpose, Scope & Objectives

7. Terrorists regularly adapt how and where they raise and move funds and other assets in order to circumvent safeguards that jurisdictions have put in place to detect and disrupt this activity. Identifying, assessing and understanding terrorist financing (TF) risks is an essential part of dismantling and disrupting terrorist networks, as well as the effective implementation of the risk-based approach (RBA) of counter terrorist financing (CTF) measures.

8. Developing and maintaining an understanding of evolving TF risks can often present unique challenges for jurisdictions. The low value of funds or other assets used in many instances, and the wide variety of sectors misused for TF purposes, makes identification of TF vulnerabilities and threats challenging. Countries can also face challenges due to the limited availability of TF or terrorism information domestically, or the limited amount of criminal/intelligence cases under investigation. The lack of terrorism and TF expertise or personnel, and limited information on unregulated or unsupervised activities can pose further challenges for lower capacity countries. Due to such challenges, TF risk is often given limited attention in National Risk Assessments (NRAs) and is sometimes not differentiated from the risk of terrorism. Similarly, in developing a methodology for assessing risks, jurisdictions sometimes fail to take into account the unique threats posed by terrorist financiers and sympathisers as opposed to criminals.