Financial facilitators: an important component of terror networks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the financial facilitators who provide financial muscle to terrorists.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology adopted is based on the available materials on two major terrorists groups: Al Qaeda and LTTE, who have terrorized the global community in the last two decades.Findings – The key findings are that most financial facilitators are knowledgeable, literate and suave and who are kin of the top leadership or part of the clan/sect. Kinship is an important factor for trust worthiness, which leads to their association with the top level leadership for a decade or so, to handle aspects related to a terror group. Also, illegal fund raising/moving aspects are controlled by financial/operational heads of groups, while legal fund raising methods are handled by sympathizers.Research limitations/implications – The methodology is based on descriptive analysis of existing materials gathered from different writings of different persons in different places, as non...