By AML Intelligence Correspondents
EUROPEAN banks face a fresh headache today as the US Treasury said it was targeting radical left and Islamic charities.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said OFAC, FinCEN and the TFI would go after the “financial lifeblood” of the charities and NGOs.
Earlier Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would focus international counterterrorism efforts on “far-left terror,” telling officials from more than 60 countries that leftist violence had been overlooked.
The new front announced on Thursday will be a major problem for European financial services who bank some of the NGOs likely to be targeted by the US. Defining what the US will target as far-left Antifa and radical Islamic charities will be a problem for European institutions.
The United States Treasury “is bringing the full weight of our authorities to defend the integrity of the U.S. and global financial systems,” Bessent said as the White House targeted “political terrorism.”
“The unified front between international Marxism and the radical Islamic movement need not share the same ultimate vision to share the same immediate enemy of free and self-governing societies,” he said.
Nonprofits and charities would be a major focus of Treasury as “the very qualities that make these institutions worthy of the public’s trust can also make them appealing to those who endeavor to exploit it.”
OFAC had already sanctioned 17 sham charities and non-profit organizations for funding Hamas’s terrorist activities and operations.
Late last year the US designated four European groups as terrorist organisations -German Antifa Ost, Italian Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), Greek Armed Proletarian Justice and Greek Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.
Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said the summit reflects a fundamental shift in how the US sees threats.
The summit follows a series of smaller meetings held earlier this year, including one in The Hague with law enforcement officials.
Renard says many European nations expressed unease with the meeting by sending relatively junior ministers.
“They are not particularly convinced that this is a topic that justifies this type of gathering, but at the same time, they don’t want to antagonise the United States either. And therefore, this is the compromise they found,” he said.
Legitimate nonprofit and charitable structures were being exploited as a mechanism to conceal the movement of illicit funds to support political terrorism, the Treasury said.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) And IRS-CI had developed the world’s most sophisticated financial counterterrorism capabilities which would now be used in this new front.
“We are now mobilizing some of the same tools that we have deployed against terrorists abroad to confront this emerging threat here in the homeland. Like every form of illicit finance, these networks rely on the global financial system. It is our mandate to deny terrorist groups access to those channels,” said Bessent.
Treasury was expanding its efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable and nonprofit structures as vehicles for illicit finance.
“We are examining where tax-exempt status has been exploited, which charitable entities have become financial conduits for foreign-influence activity, and how those entrusted with stewardship of these organizations have instead enabled violence. Where the evidence leads, we will not hesitate to follow. And, of course, we will hold these organizations’ officers and directors accountable, just as financial institutions must know theirs clients; they must know their grantees,” Bessent warned.
He claimed the resurgence of political terrorism, transnational in design and far-left in doctrine was no longer the concern of any one nation.
Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) had a mandate to identify, disrupt, and disable illicit foreign funds. Treasury was now “extending that abiding mission to meet an evolving threat”.
“The threat is transnational. Our response must be no less so. Indeed, our cooperation must be as disciplined as the networks we seek to dismantle,” the Treasury Secretary said.
Specifically he said TFI would be looking at the global financial system and ensure there was no place to allow it to become a sanctuary for those who seek to subvert it.
Treasury would identify illicit funding, “however artfully it is concealed”.
“We will dismantle the networks that sustain political terrorism, however respectable their fronts. We will pursue those who enable political violence, however distant their jurisdictions. And we will deepen our collaboration with every nation represented in this room, for as long as this work requires.” Bessent said.
He added:
“We once understood terrorism principally as an external menace. That is no longer the world we inhabit. Increasingly, we are confronting sophisticated, organized networks that cross borders to incite violence within them. Meanwhile, old ideological boundaries are now giving way to new operational alliances. The unified front between international Marxism and the radical Islamic movement need not share the same ultimate vision to share the same immediate enemy of free and self-governing societies.
“That convergence should concern every government represented in this room. These terrorists understand an enduring truth: societies are rarely subverted from afar until they have first been weakened from within. So as it tears at the social fabric that allows our societies to function, left-wing terrorism is the visible manifestation of a much broader and more insidious effort to undermine the philosophies that built Western civilization and sustain all we hold dear.
“Some of these activities are overt: bombings, assassinations, and organized violence in our streets. Others are quieter campaigns to suppress speech, intimidate political opposition, and sabotage our national institutions”.
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