Terrorist financing

Terrorist financing

Terrorist financing means collecting, providing or receiving assets in order for them to be used, or with the knowledge that they are intended to be used, to commit such criminal offences as set out in the Act on Criminal Responsibility for the Financing of Particularly Serious Crime in Some Cases, or for such travel as set out in the Act on Criminal Responsibility for Public Provocation, Recruitment and Training concerning Terrorist Offences and other Particularly Serious Crime.

The purpose of financing may be to contribute to strengthening or maintaining a terrorist organization's ability to recruit and radicalize new individuals or to produce and spread the organization's propaganda as well as to acquire weapons and other material (organizational financing). It can also be financing a specific terrorist attack (operational financing).

The sums can vary widely, from small sums in the case of self-financed attacks to significant sums generated by members within organizations and which then need to be transferred. There are therefore large differences in how funds are collected and transferred.

The firm's responsibility

Firms that are subject to the Anti-Money Laundering Act are responsible for reporting, without delay, suspected money laundering or terrorist financing in their operations to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) within the Swedish Police. Reporting shall be done as instructed by the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Finansinspektionen's responsibility

Finansinspektionen's responsibility is to ensure that the financial firms take measures in accordance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act, which is the administrative framework applying to firms in certain sectors to prevent them from being used for terrorist financing.

Other authorities' areas of responsibility

There are a number of authorities in Sweden that have direct responsibility for the work against the financing of terrorism.

Swedish Security Service

Swedish Security Service are responsible for detecting, preventing and investigating financing of terrorism.

• Swedish Security Service

• The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) within the Swedish Police

FIU receives reports on suspected financing of terrorism by the companies subject by the Money Laundering Act.

• The Financial Intelligence Unit (in Swedish)

Publications and reports

Continuous monitoring of the current situation regarding terrorism in general and the financing of terrorism specifically, both nationally and internationally, is of great importance in order to be able to identify new threats and how these affect the risk of being exploited as a company by natural or legal persons who finance terrorism.
There are numerous reports from both national authorities and international authorities and bodies that fully or partially deal with the phenomenon of terrorist financing. Some of the reports are annual publications where new versions are published every year.

Read more (in Swedish)