When a Franco-Belgian terror cell brought devastation to the heart of Europe by attacking Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March 2016, the two countries’ security agencies were caught off guard. For one, both operations were highly sophisticated and well resourced. But they were also financed in a way that evaded the attention of law enforcement. In the case of the assault on Paris, the French finance ministry’s intelligence unit, Tracfin, estimated the total cost of the deadly assault at no more than €30,000. Much of this was splintered into smaller sums deployed on anonymous, prepaid cards.
The financing mechanisms behind these attacks offer one example of an escalating arms race between financial regulators on the one hand and terrorist networks, criminals and money launderers on the other. And it is unfolding against a backdrop of an increasingly complex global financial system.
