'Terrorists using prepaid cards to transfer money'

Terrorists are looking for innovative ways to move money around and finance their attacks, the Air India inquiry was told in Toronto.

Organizations and individuals involved in terror cells are buying pre-paid merchandise cards and using cell phones and the Internet to buy items and transfer money, a British expert told inquiry Commissioner John Major in Ottawa on Thursday.

Paul Newham of National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit said, "Right now the United Kingdom is seeing a flurry of activity around pre-paid cards -- pre-paid cards are the type of instrument you can obtain anonymously."

"Any product is vulnerable both to money laundering and to terrorist financing. Terrorists follow general consumer trends when they can be used to cover up transactions. A trend we are going to see in the future is over the use of mobile phones to pay for products and services," he testified.

The inquiry into the June 1985 Air India bombing plot that claimed 331 lives is looking at the extent of terrorism financing in Canada and what is being done about the problem.

Newham also painted a picture of a level of co-operation between British agencies that contrasted sharply with the situation in Canada.

"It is very easy to pick up the phone to any of the people involved in specific cases and speak to them," Newham said.

That co-operation in criminal cases led to the successful prosecution in less than two years of a terrorist plot from June 21, 2005, he said.

Inquiry lawyer Roger Biladeau asked Newham to describe the inter-agency relationship.

"Oh yes, of course. Post-attack, my unit seeks to draw together full financial profiles of all the individuals... arrested and charged. We produce schedules of information, schematics where necessary for court purposes... our unit is very much a support unit in those circumstances," said Newham.

The inquiry has heard that there has never been a conviction for terrorist financing in Canada, though the information has been used in broader criminal cases.

Newham said that is also the situation in the UK, where the financial information may become part of the larger criminal case without being the subject of a specific charge.

"We use a variety of techniques such as asset freezing where we find that prosecutions are not possible," he said.

"A large part of our work is also supporting wider counter-terrorist operations. We find that the financial information or financial intelligence we can model and analyze assists greatly in the ID of terrorist suspects and suspected terrorist networks within the United Kingdom."

Like other witnesses at the Air India inquiry who have testified about terrorist financing, Newham said the deadliest of plots do not always involve a lot of cash.

The British subway attacks on July 7, 2005, cost somewhere between $8,000 and $20,000, he testified.

The inquiry heard earlier that the total money spent by the hijackers before the September 11, 2001, US terror attacks was less than $1 million.