Reverse money laundering
The process of conducting financial transactions with clean money for the purpose of concealing or disguising the future use of that money to commit a criminal act could be called reverse money laundering.
Introduction
A new form of money laundering involves not the proceeds of past crimes, but money intended to be used to commit crimes in the future. Terrorism causes enormous costs to society. Since the 9/11 attacks, the “war on terror” has therefore been an important challenge to all civilized countries. In the present contribution we analyse the root causes and costs of terrorist activity, thereby setting the stage for discussing the need for measures against terrorist financing. We argue that running a terrorist organization requires substantial financial resources which are transferred to the groups through clandestine and often illegal channels. Anti‐money laundering policies may appear useful measures to stop transfers to terrorist groups; however, they are not sufficient means to deal with all facets of terrorist financing. Compared to similar activities of organized crime, terrorist financing involves “reverse” money laundering. This is a consequence of some fundamental differences between terrorism and organized crime, which also lead to different implications in terms of choosing appropriate counter‐measures.
Since the mid-4980s, virtually all of the developed countries, and many of the developing countries, have enacted legislation to make money laundering a criminal offence. The statutes differ in complexity and scope, some are quite simple and narrow, making it an offence only to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking. Others are complicated and broad. The statutes also differ in terms of the penalties provided: some only provide for incarceration, while others authorise the confiscation of the laundered property or any property involved in the laundering offence.
With only minor exceptions, these statutes have one thing in common: they focus on the proceeds of crimes that have already been committed. Every one of them asks, 'what is the defendant doing with the proceeds of his crime?' Is he engaging in convoluted transactions to conceal or disguise the source of the money? Is he commingling it with other funds to disguise its whereabouts, or putting it in third-party names to conceal or disguise its ownership? Is he converting it to cash to avoid a paper trail, or is he employing professional money launderers to sell it for him on the black market so that he can move the money out of the country or convert it to another currency?
The ways in which the proceeds of crime can be concealed or disguised are endless particularly in an age of financial globalisation; and those responsible for law and order are constantly - through revisions to legislation, and through the development of new investigative techniques - trying to keep up with the inventiveness of the criminal mind. But again, in all of these instances, focus has been on the past; on looking backwards to see where the money came from and how the criminal is trying to disguise that source, and not forwards to see what the money was going to be used for.

The financing of terrorist groups

Terrorism is a costly venture. Terrorists are (in theory) considered rational actors that maximize their utility from violence, subject to certain costs, benefits and budget constraints (all of which are usually governed by socio‐economic, politico‐institutional and other social conditions). That is, financial means (as they manifest themselves in a group’s budget constraint) also influence the patterns of terrorist activity. Basically, financial means can be channelled into two activities: (i) aggressive actions (terrorist attacks) and (ii) other operative (also defensive) actions (e.g., secret communication). Limiting the availability of financial resources through appropriate counter‐terrorism policies may be an effective means to restrain terrorist activity at least in the short run.
Terrorist attacks serve as a prime instrument of “communication” of terrorists with the general public, intended to win support, demoralize enemies, and to raise public awareness and the terrorists’ own morale. They are the terrorists’ main instrument to make their political objectives known and to inflict costs on the government to make government concessions more likely.
Besides the (supposedly) small cost of conducting attacks, however, running and maintaining a terrorist organization in the medium and long run requires a significant amount of financial resources. Associated (operative) costs may include, e.g., the operation of secret communication systems and training facilities, the process of recruiting, “wages” for active members of the group and the families of martyrs or the support of sleeper cells. Clearly, it is difficult to estimate these operative (fixed) costs for terrorist groups. Schneider (2009, 2010) estimates the financial flows of Islamic terrorist groups to amount to $5‐50 million per year. For instance, he estimates that the annual budget of Al‐Qaeda between 2001 and 2004 was approximately $20‐50 million. From these estimates and the comparatively low estimates regarding the costs of offensive actions (i.e., actual terrorist strikes) we may hypothesize that it is especially the “fixed costs” of terrorism that matter, even net of the possibility that terrorist groups use some of their financial resources to build up a “war chest” to increase financial independence. Clearly, there is an interaction between the financial needs of a terrorist group, its organizational structure and its effectiveness in terms of inflicting damage. On the one hand, larger and/or more aggressive groups ought to be more effective in generating socio‐economic and political destabilization. On the other hand, larger and/or more aggressive groups are also expected to need more financial resources. In contrast to this, the trend toward loose network structures in terrorism with a stronger reliance on self‐organized home‐grown terrorism tends to reduce the need for funds.
Given that utility maximization of terrorist groups (partially) depends upon their budget constraints (i.e., financial resources), understanding the forms and mechanisms of terrorism financing (also with respect to the role of money laundering) is important for mitigating the socio‐economic and political repercussions of terrorism. In the next subsection, we shall discuss the issue of terrorist financing in more detail.

The importance of money laundering for terrorist financing

Compared to anti‐money laundering legislation targeting organized crime, analogous measures against terrorist financing are a more recent development, as argued above. Next to the fact that at least some organizational convergence can be assumed, this helps to explains why fighting money laundering and terrorism financing are treated alike in terms of prosecution.14 Thony (2005) argues that the main concern of prosecutors should be the funds themselves (and the organizations behind them), not the illegal processing of the funds. Therefore, he claims that the rationale of the antimony laundering strategy can be applied mutatis mutandis to terrorist groups. Hence, after the 9/11 attacks it appeared reasonable from the prosecutors’ perspective to simply extend the existing anti‐money laundering legislation by adding some rules tailored to the specific case of terrorist financing.
With respect to the direction of money flows differences between organized crime and terrorism are very obvious. From the definitions of money laundering and terrorism financing, as stated above, we can see that money laundering aims at disguising the criminal identity of funds such that they appear legitimate. Contrary to this, as Section 3.2 shows, substantial financial means of terrorist organizations stem from state or private sponsorship implying a legitimate origin. This fact exacerbates the prosecutors’ problem because money flows which are perfectly legitimate have to be recognized as leading to dangerous terrorist activities. This requires knowledge of the ultimate intentions of the remitter of the funds. From a practical point of view this calls for close cooperation between money laundering prosecutors and counter‐terrorism intelligence. This argument does not, however, imply that the instruments of antimony laundering policies should be disregarded in fighting terrorist financing. But they show that an even broader and more sophisticated approach is needed to detect financial flows especially towards the operative units of terror organizations, i.e., towards terrorist cells all around the world. Despite this structural difference, our previous discussion has shown that at least some terror groups engage in criminal activity to finance their organizations. Especially if these groups have a legal front institution, money laundering of illegitimate funds becomes necessary.16 This link matters particularly when illegitimate funds have to be relocated from an illegal venture (possibly located abroad) toward the terrorist groups’ headquarters or leaders, as this volume of financial flows is usually much more significant compared to the far less important flows from the group leaders to small cells. Recall that the 9/11 attack required funds of about half a million dollars, while running the Al‐Qaeda main organization amounts to estimated 20‐50 million dollars annually.
Even if we abstract from “commercial terrorist” groups and consider “traditional” terrorism only (i.e., the extreme position in the crime–terrorism continuum), we have to acknowledge that terrorist organizations tend to obscure or disguise the links to their sponsors (Gilmore 2004) for reasons of sustaining the terrorist organization in the long run. It is clearly not in the interest of the group leaders to disclose these sponsors or the channels of transferring funds to the operative units, as these links could be used for future terrorist activities. In this sense, terrorist financing – at least in terms of illegal processing of funds – might in fact be seen as some close variant of traditional money laundering conducted by organized crime (implying the use of the same anti‐money laundering instruments).

Conclusions Terrorism is a costly challenge to modern societies. Terrorists aim at economic destabilization to push their agenda and to force the governments to give in. Terrorism may produce direct costs (destruction) and (more importantly) indirect costs, where the latter stem from the reaction of economic agents to the threat of terrorism (by means of capital flight, diversion of investment, adjustments in government budgets etc). While the exact macroeconomic consequences of terrorism depend on country‐specific conditions (e.g., macroeconomic size and robustness, intensity of terrorism), in particular developing economies seem to be vulnerable to terrorism, given that they are often less‐diversified and thus economically weak. At the same time, the political and social costs of terrorism (e.g., in terms of reduced political openness and life satisfaction) should not be disregarded, which may very well also matter to more developed economies. In general, the costs of terrorism appear sufficiently high to call for a broad range of counter‐measures.