Controls Over Information Sharing - Countering Terrorism
Governments were modestly countering terrorism, leading the way was the United State through its battles against drug money and crime fighting acts that stretches back the late 80s, that is up until the 9/11 attacks on New york city, then, and immediately after, the U. S. enacted a U. S. patriot act putting restrictions on financial transaction from and to the United States or any country that uses the SWIFT system, which is basically everyone that has to transfer money to complete business deals since the system is designed for safe communication between financial institutions. The secretary of Treasury was given more authority to focus the U. S. financial whip of restrictions and sanctions on any institution or body he or she might see as threatening the financial system either through fines (as a passive reaction) or through adjusting and increasing standards quality (as an active reaction) in order to avoid malign practices that sometimes can occur unknowingly or unintentionally.
Information sharing is one of the stepping stones in the fight against reversed money laundry but pushing for information sharing hasn’t stopped such funding even though banks go through an entire process of background checks and cross checks with lists that the government provides of nationals or citizens involved in acts against the state. Here, and to fill the gap, the state should develop its own information sharing advanced system with other countries from which these nationals came or take as a place of residence, since it occurs at a counterpart level to increase understanding and mutual, problems like language barriers, encryption, different systems and time delays still exist today hindering the whole concept of unified strength and overall control. There has to be an increased cooperation between governments on that level as this process would be triggered only if there are red flag and by then the individual willingly would have waivered some of their rights and saved the institution the legally protected right to monitor and report them under the safe harbor concept if they are involved in such acts.
Controls should be enhanced to contain front businesses and suspitous charitable organizations through enacting special regulations as to who manages the organization, that is their background or political affiliation, as well as cash-based small and medium-sized businesses that continue to constitute a sign to stop at and examine due to its “off the radar” feature of going by unnoticed, but experience has shown that it only takes as little as $10, 000 as reported following the ISIS Paris attacks, $10, 000 to commit horrific a crime. Wether its truck bombs in the Middle East and Africs targeting U. S. embassies or foreign staff or small scale attacks like mass shootings, the cost ranges in the $6000-$530, 000 which is a wakeup call for us to act now in a prevention, active sense. Public awareness campaigns should be held addressing the dangers of such behaviour in the society at large, the U. S. has a security motto “If you see something, say something”, there should be something similar in our day-to-day financial practices, transactions that raise an eyebrow must be scrutinized on top of the existing controls. For example, a series of small, under $10, 000 dollar single transactions from the same source or the transfer of large amounts of money to unidentified individuals or non-regulate customers in case of business ownership with no business ties, these two examples show that as time passes, criminal continue to develop new way to evade detection. In a recent article, The Guardian (2018) stated that the famous German-based Deutsche bank was fined millions of euros as a result of poor due diligence when it came to customer identification and access, this is one of the cases that the author referred to earlier where it was believed to be done unknowingly or unintentionally. Nevertheless, some artificial trades with Moscow and New York were discovered suggesting intent but the rule of the thumb is innocent until proven guilty so it is a financial crime due to poor controls only and is treated as such under the law of the land, in this case Germany. The best way remains the full implementation of existing rules and regulation and using that as a building block to tackle developing issues as they arise.
The tourism sector is the first indicator of any malign activity, it affects a country’s economy and its global security rating and foreign direct investment potential, several credit rating agencies exist for the sole purpose of rating countries in terms of political risk among other types of risks, therefore, these activities impact income, reputation and has long-term effect for many reasons. Governments are directly responsible but are not doing enough as a lot of them depend on foreign aid packages (especially Middle-eastern and African situated countries, more needs to be done to counter destabilizing activities such as implementing international laws and anti-terrorism acts which consequently work in the country’s interest for example through tourism revenue among other interest like general security and reputation.
Government’s role remains of vital importance as Levi M. (2006) suggests, the Bank secrecy act is a step forward in the direction of countering money laundering and its reversed form by criminalizing the mere failure to report such acts as opposed to only help to commit or knowingly carry out. The whole idea of governments stepping in began with fighting drugs then moved to deal with any illegal acts involving money such as terrorism or tax evasion and evolved to the point of monitoring transactions to various location and following up with unusual activities, still, not enough is being done due to one major factor which we will address next.
Globalization was and with its expanding nature through technological developments whether its fast transport, split second money transfers, or even use of online website and application included smart phones remains to be the biggest barrier to overcome in terms of achieving a certain, secure and fully ensured controls to have oversight on transaction that prevent activities which governments aim to limit.
As illegal activities continue to find new forms to evade the system of laws and regulation, there is a growing need for an effective, efficient ways in which these channels can be closed or controlled once and for all, thus far there are numerous problems with the current system like the lack of coordination between official bodies and the very low cost of carrying out acts against the homeland that constitute the single most threatening factor, we often dismiss immateriality in the auditing profession but here it is of utmost importance.
