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Insight Intelligence: February 2023

Mar 7, 2023

February 2023 was a busy month for Insight Intelligence! On top of our usual schedule of publications, I wrote an op-ed for the Globe and Mail, and travelled to South Africa to deliver training on financial intelligence analysis. I’m also happy to report that Lena and I are putting the finishing touches on a new product: an online course on terrorist financing! This will be available in the near future, so stay tuned for that. And of course a warm welcome to all the new members of our community. We hit 3,200 this morning! As always, don’t forget to subscribe and share this with your network.

In February, we focused on some terrorist financing issues and of course the Wagner Group. We wrote up an analysis of the recent UK case of the ISIS “barber funder”. This was an interesting case because it combined a lot of trends and issues that we’ve been seeing in the terrorist financing space.

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ISIS "Barber Funder"

A warm welcome to our new Insight Intelligence subscribers! Last week we crossed the 3k subscriber threshold, and I have to say, I’m rather pleased that so many people find this newsletter interesting and useful. Thank you to all who have joined us, and who share this newsletter! This week, we’re taking a look at a terrorist financing case from the UK. We normally focus on terrorist attack financing, or terrorist organization financing. This case is a bit different, because it involves a terrorist financier: someone whose purpose and goal is to provide funds for terrorist activity. Let’s dig in…

7 months ago · 4 likes · Jessica Davis

We also continued to build our baseline knowledge of terrorist groups with this profile on the Turkistan Islamic Party.

And of course I published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail. While the original is behind a paywall, I always publish an un-gated version a week later, which you can find here: Canada is taking an unserious approach to stopping the Russian Wagner Group

New freebies

As part of my work in South Africa, I made my article on illicit financing through NFTs freely available to my students (and all of you!).

From the archives:

This month we also updated our analysis of the Wagner Group of companies, and amazingly, there’s still more to add to this chart / analysis!

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Wagner Group's Web of Companies

This week, Insight Intelligence is taking a look at Wagner Group - a Russian private military corporation that functions as a proxy for the Russian state. We’re looking at the group’s corporate structure, and whether Canada should list them as a terrorist entity. Read on for plenty of details, and some policy recommendations…

8 months ago · 8 likes · Jessica Davis

Coming in over the next few weeks, we have a number of new analyses to share with you. I’ll be taking a close look at how sanctions are enforced in Canada (thanks to a reader question!), looking at the impact of the death of Al-Sudani on ISIS Somalia (along with a quick look at how that group finances its activities), how mis and disinformation is financed (both overtly and illicitly), and much more. So if that’s of interest to you, you know what to do! (Subscribe, of course.)

That’s it for now. If you like what you read, please share it with a friend. Thanks for your support!