Following the Money: Recap of Illicit Financing Insights from February
Insight Monitor's February roundup
Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to our new subscribers this February! Thank you for joining our community and committing to learn more about illicit financing and international security. Your support encourages us to delve deeper into research and produce more articles. Consider upgrading to become a paying subscriber to access exclusive content and contribute to our mission. Together, let's make an impact on global security!
This month, we’re starting a new feature where you can choose one article for us to unlock (at the bottom of this article). You can vote for 24 hours after this post is published, and then I’ll remove the paywall on the article with the most votes. So if there’s something you really want to read, but can’t quite make the commitment to subscribe, here’s your chance! You can also share this with your friends and colleagues and encourage them to vote as well. The more the merrier.
In February, we continued our analysis of Nazi content on substack, and unfortunately found that the platform is still home to a lot of very hateful, and highly monetized, content:
Group profiles
This month, we also published three group profiles. We took a look at the Diagolon network here in Canada and how it finances its activities.
We also wrote a detailed analysis of the financing behind the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second-largest terrorist group operating in Gaza.
To round out the month, we looked at something a little different, and analyzed the jihadi private military company (Malhama Tactical)’s financing. This was a different one for us, but builds on our analysis of the Wagner Group’s financing and procurement networks.
If you want to learn more about how to conduct this type of analysis yourself, and what you should look for when thinking about terrorist financing, we have the perfect course for you! Check it out below:
In addition to these group profiles, we also had a close read of the United Nation’s 33rd Monitoring Team report. This report looks at Al Qaeda and ISIL-related terrorism globally. For reference, we have read every single one of these reports, and actually have a master document of all the financing material contained in them. This helps us quickly see what’s new and significant, which we have highlighted below.
Attack profiles
One of our main lines of effort for Insight Monitor is to look at different terrorist attacks and figure out how they were financed, and how the perpetrators procured the weapons and components for their activities. This month we looked at the 2011 Norway attacks. Have a read: it’s one of the most expensive terrorist attacks in history!
News and commentary
Of course, we also provided our analysis on all the terrorist financing news from January 2024. These news roundups are important for us to keep our fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the illicit financing space. We also keep track of the trends and methods we see over time so we can better assess changes in tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Canada also saw its first prosecution of a white nationalist for murder, which the judge later found was an act of terrorism. I was interviewed on CBC’s The Current to explain the significance of the arrest, prosecution, and sentence.
Upcoming events
Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about terrorist financing and cryptocurrency, I’ll be joining Ari Redbord from TRM Labs to talk all things crypto & TF at an AML Rightsource learning event. It’s free to attend, and you’ll get a chance to ask questions.
Now we get to the good part: voting to unlock an article! Let us know what you want to read, and we’ll remove the paywall in 24 hours after this post is published.
That’s it for our month of February. Thanks for caring about illicit financing and international security, and don’t forget to share and subscribe!
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