There are countries ‘clearly guilty’ of aiding terrorism, wilfully providing safe havens to terrorists: India

India has informed the UN that it has been a sufferer of terrorism, particularly from throughout the border, during the last a number of many years and that there are countries “clearly guilty” of aiding, supporting terrorist actions and providing safe havens to militants, a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan.

In his opening remarks to the digital high-level aspect occasion ‘Countering Financing of Terrorism in the Post COVID-19 Landscape’ throughout the 2nd Counter-Terrorism Week, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T. S. Tirumurti has stated that stopping terrorists from accessing monetary assets is essential to efficiently counter the menace of terrorism.

“India has been a victim of terrorism, particularly cross-border terrorism, over the last several decades,” Mr. Tirumurti stated on Friday. He famous that whereas some States lack the legal-operational frameworks and essential capacities for countering the financing of terrorism, “there are other States that are clearly guilty of aiding and supporting terrorism, and wilfully providing financial assistance and safe havens to terrorists.

While we must enhance capacities of the former, the international community must collectively call out the latter and hold them accountable.” The remarks appeared to be an obvious reference to Pakistan.

Mr. Tirumurti additionally emphasised the necessity for worldwide collaboration to counter-financing terrorism, assist and strengthen the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and supply higher funding to UN Counter-Terrorism structure.

India co-hosted the side-event together with the Permanent Mission of France, UN Office of Drugs and Crime, UN Office of Counter-Terrorism and the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate.

Mr. Tirumurti voiced concern that the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced forth new dangers to the efforts of Countering Financing of Terrorism (CFT), with pretend charities, pretend Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs), and crowdfunding notably turning into extra frequent sources of terror-financing.

“Terrorist organisations have also begun to exploit the anonymity afforded by blockchain technology for fundraising and finances,” he stated including that as half of the National Risk Assessment (NRA), an NPO Risk Assessment in 2020 and 2021 was performed.

“Identifying linkages between various individuals, NPOs and terrorist outfits active in the region have been given due weightage,” he stated.

“While we remain vigilant to the risk posed by the misuse of emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, the benefits of many of these technologies far outweigh the risk and need to be harnessed to strengthen our CFT efforts,” he stated.

Mr. Tirumurti informed the occasion that India is in course of of upgrading its Financial Intelligence Network or FINNET by introducing machine studying or synthetic intelligence, chatbots, digital assistants, pure language processing, locational intelligence and spatial analytics, orchestration and menace intelligence, to carry out superior evaluation, strengthen the monetary intelligence infrastructure and guarantee faster dissemination of terror-financing circumstances to regulation enforcement businesses (LEAs).

India has developed the mandatory capabilities to counter-terrorism, together with authorized and institutional framework and technical functionality to fight terrorism in its varied varieties and manifestations, notably countering the financing of terrorism, he stated.

Mr. Tirumurti additional stated that money couriers have remained one of the most important terror-financing strategies to keep away from audit trials. Pointing out that India has included the function of money couriers in its NRA, he stated the federal government’s steps in direction of reducing money transactions by way of banks are proving to be efficient in containing money move by way of banks.

“During an investigation of cases of terror funding, earnest efforts are made to unearth the trail of funds and disrupt the entire network so as to give a severe blow to the terrorists and terrorist organisations,” he stated including that India follows worldwide requirements for evaluation of the chance posed by terrorism to its monetary sector and undertakes preventive and mitigation measures.

India has been a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) since 2010 and according to suggestion 1 of the FATF, National Risk Assessment associated to terror financing is undertaken often to assess the rising, and dynamic threats posed by terrorists, to determine strategies and devices utilized by terrorists or terrorist teams so as to appeal to, transfer or use funds for felony functions, he stated.

India carried out National Risk Assessments in 2019 and 2020 and has made “tremendous progress” in implementing the suggestions of FATF commensurate with its Money Laundering and terror-financing dangers. Mr. Tirumurti stated India is gearing up for its upcoming analysis of FATF.

India has been contributing proactively to additional worldwide cooperation to fight the financing of terrorism on the regional and worldwide degree. In 2018, India contributed $5,50,000 to the UNOCT’s programmes concentrating on capability constructing of countries in East and Southern Africa. This 12 months too, India has contributed half one million {dollars} to additional strengthen these efforts, Mr. Tirumurti stated.