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After 9/11, international counter terrorism financing efforts have delivered measures under both a criminal justice model and a regulatory risks model. Questions therefore arise about the delivery of justice within these respective models, alongside doubts about their capacity to yield meaningful impacts from an 'all risks' platform rather than a targeted criminal suspect approach. Particular reference is made to informal value transfer systems, such as hawala, which have come under sustained suspicion. This article presents original insights from a fieldwork survey of UK counter terrorism legislation and practices in order to assess their intended and, to some extent, unintended consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion contributes to the history of the colonial rule of law that governed market practice in India using the South Asian indigenous credit institution known as hundi. A centuries-old artery of credit for Indian merchant networks, and a living institution that has largely been driven underground by twenty-first-century laws, hundi provides a window into the dynamics of colonial law from the commercial and financial legislation of the 1880s to the final attempt to codify hundi in the 1960s and 1970s in a bid to bridge the growing disconnect between the Indian indigenous banking sector and modern banking. I chart the British colonial and post-independence history of hundi as means of understanding the wider political, legislative and economic dynamics of colonial state formation and the legacies of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political aspects of currencies. Particular focus is given to black market currency trading and crypto-currencies. Details on transnational currencies such as the euro and the European sovereign debt crisis of 2009 are presented. Other topics include the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community, or CFA) franc, the electronic currency known as Bitcoin and the Hawala system for transferring funds.

The article focuses on the group of 630,000 Somali refugees in Kenya with attention paid to Eastleigh neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya, known as Little Mogadishu due to the number of Somalis that live there. Topics include Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabab, its terrorist attacks in Kenya, and the establishment of Eastleigh by British colonists in the 1920s. Suspicion against Kenyan Somalis, operations of Kenya Defense Forces, and the illegal money transfer network hawala are also discusses.

Somalia is not entirely dysfunctional. Indeed, select parts of the Somali economic, social and political landscape work quite well. Ironically, where the country works best also reflects some of what is most wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the informal indigenous banking system of Hundi/Hawala in the Near East and Southern Asia. Details are given noting the difficulty in outlining its precise economic definition and functioning in comparison to Western banking. An overview of historical documents from the early 20th-century regarding its usage and analysis is provided in order to establish a basic conception of its working and place within its parent societies. Particular examples are given noting the interaction by the British colonial government of India with the system.

The article discusses the hawala transaction as a term and a concept, and its security challenges. It notes that hawala is depicted as money transfer without money movement, wherein a hawaladar operator will call, e-mail, or fax another hawaladar, who will pay using his local funds and local currency. It explores the use of countervaluation procedure on trade-based money laundering and its relation to terrorism finance. Current regulation efforts to combat these issues are also discussed.

The informal funds transfer system found among South Asian migrant workers in general and Bangladeshi migrant workers in particular in the major labour-receiving countries of East and South-east Asia is popularly known as hundi. The hundi is informal but highly organized and founded on social infrastructure comprised of social and symbolic ties. Existing literature tends to highlight formal remittance channels and is underwritten by either economic or security concerns. Focusing on the social dimensions of the hundi as an informal funds transfer system and the recent security implications of the hundi system, this study examines the operations of and social relationships embedded within the hundi system in the context of East and South-east Asia. Drawing on the experiences of a Bangladeshi sending village as well as four destination countries in East and South-east Asia, this study reports that there are three phases in hundi transactions: the first mile, the intermediary stage and the last mile. The hundi is adopted and transformed through reciprocity. The system is composed of a web of interconnecting social relationships that supports the transfer of migrants' savings internationally. We find reliability and credibility as essential ingredients to a business and these are maintained through social sanctions. The study suggests that migrant workers' right to use a cheap and convenient service should be facilitated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the system of hawala, a black market local money exchanging system used in many regions of political or economic instability. The system's particular presence in the Middle East in areas lacking formal infrastructure is highlighted, discussing its humanitarian as well as illicit uses. The historical origins of the practice are also described and analyzed.

1. Research on which this paper is based was sponsored by a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant for a study of ‘Terrorist Finance and the Nexus with Transnational Organized Crime’ (grant no. 2003‐DT‐CX‐0001), a grant by the NIJ to look into informal value transfer systems (IVTS) (grant number 2002‐IJ‐CX‐0001), as well as studies sponsored by the World Bank and the Dutch Ministry of Justice’s Research and Documentation Centre (WODC).This paper sheds light on the routine practices and mechanics of hawala, an informal funds transfer system, which emerged in the Indian subcontinent and spread globally in recent decades. Hawala has come under suspicion of being a tool in the hands of al Qaeda and other terrorists, so a series of measures and policies have been taken internationally for its regulation and control. The paper dispels several myths about hawala, such as the lack of money movement or the absence of paper‐work and trails for investigators. By focusing on the Pakistan hawala modus operandi, it also explains the routes money follows before it reaches the final destination mostly in the hands of expatriates' extended families. By showing how these mechanics make economic sense, the paper makes a contribution to more sensitive, informed, fair and consensual law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the negative impact that hawala has on the monetary and loan systems of many countries. The hawala system is used throughout almost the whole world, even in countries with developed, liberal financial systems. It is difficult to quantify the scale of hawala, but one can state with confidence that billions of dollars flow through it. According to a number of parameters, however, it meets the economic needs of the present, and without it many people living in developing countries would be completely deprived of the means of subsistence.

Focuses on hawala, an ancient banking system that originated in the Middle East and South Asia. Reasons behind the popularity of hawala; Role of hawala in money laundering and terrorist financing crimes; Example of laws and regulations in various countries that address the hawala system.

The approach of money laundering as a result of international terrorist activity presupposes a previous methodological redefinition of economic criminal and macro-criminal phenomena. The classic system of symptomatic-clinical analysis has to be necessarily complemented by a tomographic analysis of the economic mechanisms to detect the technical and practical vulnerability levels of the system from instantaneous successive instant images. Within the clinical framework, special consideration should be given to the functioning of the so called "unlawful networks" which are professional networks of reciprocal unlawful exchanges largely used both by conventional organized crime as well as by terrorism, each one from a different perspective and with varied aims. The work procedure and the practical implication of the same are emphasized within the tomographic analysis system. These implications are used to differentiate between money laundering from drug trafficking and terrorism. This clear difference is more noticeable when the socio-structural conditioning, which hinders the prevention and repression of terrorism money laundering, is studied, especially when implementing the clandestine money transferring system known as "Hawala". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the migratory and economic networks of the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Details on the political and socio-economic marginalization of the Afghan population; Basis of the economic and trading activities of refugees on the hawala system; Way of structuring transnational Afghan society.

In this paper I argue that the informal hawala money-transfer networks, which were made to take much of the blame for terrorist financing in the wake of the September 11 attacks, are not 'underground' banking systems but are connected to Western banking in a myriad of ways. I argue that negative stereotyping of hawala in press and policy discourses has implicitly constructed Western banking as the normal and legitimate space of international finance and has deflected calls for regulation of Western investment banking. I discuss how hawala is connected to the financial exclusion of migrant workers in the West. In the war on terrorist finance, discourses of hawala have led to the underestimation of the complexity of cutting off terrorist funding, while criminalising remittance networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the application of anthropological concepts to the historical canvas of Afghanistan. Details on the social, economic and political dynamics of the country; Accounts on the ethnic relations and political life in the area; Role of hawala and hawaladar in the local and regional economic networks involving the Hazaras.