Tunisia prepared for issuing associations financing groups

A new list of associations involved in financing the extremist groups will be announced by the Tunisian security forces, as it includes dozens of associations accused of supporting and financing extremists. According to the available data, a number of associations were contacting with extremist elements and their families in Syria, Libya and Iraq. These associations provide food, hygiene and clothing to the families of these extremists, with monthly grants

According to the same data, other associations bought blankets, clothes and clothing, ostensibly distributing them among those in need, but later found that they were taking their way to mountainous areas, where they were sent to terrorist groups encircled by those mountains. The list includes dozens of charities and religious associations that involved providing financial and logistic support to the terrorist groups.

The Tunisian Association for Governance has revealed that field studies on the governance and transparency of associations have shown that only 20 of the 19,000 active associations in Tunisia respect the Associations Law and publish their financial statements. The Association of Governance published these statistics after the institutions of the Prime Minister conducted a detailed inventory of the financial grants in kind and assigned by the State to the Assemblies.

Despite the absence of stable and confirmed statistics to date, it can be said that there are more than 90 associations affiliated with the banned Ansar al-Shariah, and there are also more than 20 associations whose members are returning from hotbeds of tension or involved in transporting young people to Syria. There are also more than 10 foreign suspicious financing associations and over 30 groups supervised by militants.

The events of the Arab Spring have boosted money laundering in countries of the revolutions, including Tunisia. Suspicious transactions have surged. Tunisia finds itself among the most affected countries by such practices alongside states such as Switzerland and Belgium, which appear, respectively, in second and fifth place in the ranking of countries from which dirty money is transferred.

Money laundering, which is an element of the techniques of financial crimes, consists of hiding the source of money acquired illegally. Yet, talk about money laundering automatically drags with it talk about weapons smuggling, drug trafficking, prostitution, other forms of smuggling, corruption, and, evidently, terrorism funding.