Dark Money: How Militants Exploit Hawala to Fund Terror

Bottom Line: For terrorists, moving money covertly through hawala networks to circumvent institutionalized banking systems remains one of their leading methods of avoiding detection. The U.S. has managed to unearth and even sanction certain illicit hawala networks, but terrorists continue to exploit this centuries old, nearly untraceable practice to finance their operations around the world.

Background: Hawala, which means “transfer” in Arabic, is an informal transaction system based largely on mutual trust.

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