The international campaign to counter the financing of terrorism

Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 President Bush declared: ‘Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations. We’re asking the world to stop payment’ (‘Looking in the Wrong Places’, Economist, 20 October 2005). The notion that terrorist organisations could be disrupted, or even defeated, by attacking their financial underpinnings has exercised a powerful hold on policy-makers’ imaginations. Although the international effort to counter the financing of terrorism was born before September 2001, it was vastly expanded after the attacks on the United States.