Back to Gabrielle Goldwater's Reports
US says Saudi individuals still funding
terrorism
Tue Apr 4, 2006 2:14 PM ET
By Caroline
Drees
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-04T181412Z_01_N044564_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-FINANCIAL-SAUDI.xml&archived=False
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia must do a better job at ferreting out
major
individual donors who continue to fund terrorism abroad, including in
Iraq,
a top U.S. Treasury official said on Tuesday.
Stuart Levey, the
Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial
intelligence, said
Saudi Arabia had made significant strides in
counterterrorism efforts in
recent years and that the kingdom was "doing an
excellent job" fighting
operatives of
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network at home.
But he told
a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee that concerns
remained, including
the existence of so-called "deep-pocket donors" and the
abuse of charities
to fund militants.
"Is money leaving Saudi Arabia to fund terrorism
abroad? Yes," said Levey,
who has traveled to Saudi Arabia twice in the last
two months. "Undoubtedly,
some of that money is going to Iraq. And it's
going to Southeast Asia and
it's going to any other place where there are
terrorists."
He said Saudi Arabia had taken steps to curb terrorism
financing, but had
failed to set up a special charity commission to regulate
the sector, as it
had pledged. He said rules implemented as a stop-gap
measure in the interim
"haven't been uniformly implemented."
Levey
said Saudi Arabia's fledgling Financial Intelligence Unit, set up last
year
after much prodding from the United States, was still not fully
functional.
Financial Intelligence Units are government agencies that
collect, analyze
and exchange financial information to help fight
money
laundering and terrorism financing.
"What needs to happen is they need to
do financial investigations in a
serious way in order to locate those
deep-pocket donors that are still
funding terrorism abroad. And that's
something which is a concern that
hasn't happened as robustly as it needs to
happen," Levey said.
Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, an
Alabama Republican, asked
whether there was a gap between Saudi government
rhetoric and the
implementation of policy.
Levey replied: "I've got
to say that there's a lag. ... And we'll see if
there's a gap."