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Aussie cash for terror ‘increased 300 per cent’

The nation’s financial intelligence agency has claimed it is tracking more than 100 Australians on suspicion of funding terrorism.

AUSTRAC, which has a mandate to prevent money laundering, major crime and tax evasion, said the group could be contributing to the tens of millions of dollars sent overseas to fund terror in the past year.

The organisation reported a 300-per-cent spike in the number of suspicious money transactions (an extra 249 in 12 months) according to its 2014-15 annual report released on Wednesday.

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“Terrorism financing usually involves low-value transactions, making it difficult for authorities and industry to differentiate suspicious transactions from legitimate ones,” the report read.

The spike was believed to be largely driven by Syria’s civil war.

In the report, the financial intelligence unit recorded more than 81,000 “suspicious matter reports” – up 21 per cent on the previous year – valued at a total of $53 million. It found 536 of them may have funded terror groups.

In a 2014 terror funding report, AUSTRAC said terror activities in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia posed “ongoing terrorism financing risks”.

It was believed groups like Islamic State had turned to increasingly inventive ways to access money, including crowd-funding, with supporters able to donate funds before authorities could shut sites down.

But one problem was that terror activities were becoming much cheaper to fund, according to AUSTRAC chief executive Paul Jevtovic.

“Involving yourself in terrorism can be as cheap as a couple of hundred dollars, it can be as cheap as buying an airline ticket,” he told The Australian.

“They’ll use any method they can [to get money].

“They are running like a state, they need a lot of money, they have a lot of mouths to feed.”

AUSTRAC said the volume of transactions was linked to the number of Australians joining terror groups overseas, and may fund the individuals activities or be “financial support from Australian sympathisers”.

“In addition to funding individual attacks and operations, terrorism financing helps establish and maintain terrorist groups, and sustains the networks connecting them,” the report said.

“It supports the less violent or obvious aspects of a group’s operations, such as living expenses, travel, training, propaganda activities, and compensation for wounded fighters or the families of terrorists who have died.”

But, of the top five offences, terror funding was by far the lowest.

Offences contravening Commonwealth or state or territory law were the most common at more than 36,000, meanwhile terror financing accounted for just 367. However, that number had risen from 118 in 2013-14.

-with AAP

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