Paris attacks: AFP puts businesses on terror frontline

Dan Box
NOVEMBER 18, 2015
THE AUSTRALIAN
AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin says ‘financial intelligence’ was increasingly driving police investigations in Australia and overseas. Picture: Kym Smith
The Australian Federal Police commissioner has issued a warning to business, declaring it is on the frontline of the fight against international terrorism and must monitor and analyse customers’ behaviour.
Speaking at a regional counter-terrorism financing summit in Sydney last night, Andrew Colvin described the increasingly subtle methods used to move money ­between terrorists, saying “financial intelligence” was increasingly driving police investigations in Australia and overseas.
Terrorists and their supporters were “subverting” commercially available banking products and methods of payment to fund their operations, the commissioner said.
“In many ways, today’s terrorist financing is actually hiding in plain sight.”
Modern internet payment systems allowed a purchase to be made in one country and payment in another, Mr Colvin said. “Crowd-sourced money-raising tools used to raise funds quickly and simply can also be diverted to less obvious, more sinister ends,” he said. “We’re seeing a shift to lower-value and higher-volume transactions, using the same products and services that are making banking convenient for everyone.
“We’re seeing store-value cards used as a load-and-go method of travelling with near-undetectable funds. We’re seeing lines of credit, small-scale loans, credit cards being drawn upon to their upper limit with no intention of repayment. Today’s terrorists are young, mobile and digitally connected in ways we struggle to understand.”
Speaking to an audience ­including business, law-enforcement and political representatives from 18 countries, Mr Colvin asked business to “take an innovative ­approach to tease out the patterns and implications that terrorism ­financing create”.
“Industry stands the best chance of recognising emerging challenges first,” he said. “You have the expertise, you know your products, your markets and, most importantly, your customers.”
The challenge facing law enforcement, Mr Colvin said, was to work more closely with business to share information and to analyse the information provided about potential terrorism as a result.
The summit, also attended by French consul-general Nicolas Crozier, began yesterday morning with a minute’s silence in recognition of those killed during last weekend’s attacks in Paris.
A French flag, which has been flying over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the days since the ­attacks, was visible on stage during the talks — the venue of which cannot be disclosed for security reasons.
Opening the summit, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the series of recent terrorist attacks, including in Lebanon, Turkey and Kuwait, were “a sobering ­reminder of the dire threat that we all face”.
With many analysts suggesting terrorism financing is booming, identifying and disrupting the international flow of money used by terrorists overseas is increasingly seen as vital in the fight against Islamic State.
“In many instances, terrorism acts cannot and have not occurred without some form of financing,” said Paul Jevtovic, the head of Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing agency AUSTRAC.
Mr Jevtovic said that, “if we reflect on the events of Paris, every aspect of the six separate attacks at some point in their preparation” potentially involved some form of financial transaction.
While there are thought to be about 110 Australians fighting with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, an estimated 190 people within Australia are thought to be actively supporting terrorism in the Middle East through financing and recruitment.
In its most recent annual report, AUSTRAC revealed it received 536 terrorism-related “suspicious matter reports” during the past financial year, with that number increasing dramatically from the year before.
The vast majority of these were investigated further by either ASIO or Australia’s multi-agency Terrorism Financing Investigations Unit. “These reports had a total associated value of approximately $53 million, with a cash component of $11m,” the annual report said. At least 41 Australians are believed to have been killed fighting in the conflict in the Middle East, while ASIO is investigating more than 400 high-priority cases, a number that has doubled since last year.
Law-enforcement agencies across Australia are also grappling with changes in tactics and technology driven by the current threat from Islamic State and its sympathisers within Australia.
The head of the NSW Police Commander of the Counter ­Terrorism & Special Tactics ­Command, Mark Murdoch, said yesterday “going dark”, or the use of encrypted communication among terrorists, was “becoming prevalent not just overseas but here”.
“It is a challenge, and certainly one we are working to circumvent.
What it has done also is reinvigorate the need for old fashioned detective work in many respects, it’s not something we’re afraid of,” Assistant Commissioner Murdoch said.
NSW Police, as well as their counterparts in Queensland and Victoria, are also introducing new training for general duties officers likely to be first on the scene of any future terrorist attack.
This reflects the fact police may no longer be able to rely on the traditional tactic of “contain and negotiate” with a hostage taker who, as in the Paris attacks, is instead intent on killing his hostages.
“In those cases we would certainly have to look at it differently, we would have to react differently and we would have to move almost immediately,” NSW Police Acting Commissioner Nick Kaldas said yesterday.
Additional reporting: Megan Drapalski, Sarah Elks