I. OVERVIEW
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the
USA, attention was drawn to the age-old, secretive, and
globe-spanning banking system developed in Asia and
known as "Hawala" (to change, in Arabic). It is based on a
short term, discountable, negotiable, promissory note (or
bill of exchange) called "Hundi". While not limited to
Moslems, it has come to be identified with "Islamic
Banking".
Islamic Law (Sharia'a) regulates commerce and finance in
the Fiqh Al Mua'malat, (transactions amongst people).
Modern Islamic banks are overseen by the Shari'a
Supervisory Board of Islamic Banks and Institutions
("The Shari'a Committee").
The Shi'a "Islamic Laws according to the Fatawa of
Ayatullah al Uzama Syed Ali al-Husaini Seestani" has this
to say about Hawala banking:
"2298. If a debtor directs his creditor to collect his debt
from the third person, and the creditor accepts the
arrangement, the third person will, on completion of all
the conditions to be explained later, become the debtor.
Thereafter, the creditor cannot demand his debt from the
first debtor".
The prophet Muhammad (a cross border trader of goods
and commodities by profession) encouraged the free
movement of goods and the development of markets.
Numerous Moslem scholars railed against hoarding and
harmful speculation (market cornering and manipulation
known as "Gharar"). Moslems were the first to use
promissory notes and assignment, or transfer of debts via
bills of exchange ("Hawala"). Among modern banking
instruments, only floating and, therefore, uncertain,
interest payments ("Riba" and "Jahala"), futures contracts,
and forfeiting are frowned upon. But agile Moslem traders
easily and often circumvent these religious restrictions by
creating "synthetic Murabaha (contracts)" identical to
Western forward and futures contracts. Actually, the only
allowed transfer or trading of debts (as distinct from the
underlying commodities or goods) is under the Hawala.
"Hawala" consists of transferring money (usually across
borders and in order to avoid taxes or the need to bribe
officials) without physical or electronic transfer of funds.
Money changers ("Hawaladar") receive cash in one
country, no questions asked. Correspondent hawaladars in
another country dispense an identical amount (minus
minimal fees and commissions) to a recipient or, less
often, to a bank account. E-mail, or letter ("Hundi")
carrying couriers are used to convey the necessary
information (the amount of money, the date it has to be
paid on) between Hawaladars. The sender provides the
recipient with code words (or numbers, for instance the
serial numbers of currency notes), a digital encrypted
message, or agreed signals (like handshakes), to be used
to retrieve the money. Big Hawaladars use a chain of
middlemen in cities around the globe.
But most Hawaladars are small businesses. Their Hawala
activity is a sideline or moonlighting operation. "Chits"
(verbal agreements) substitute for certain written records.
In bigger operations there are human "memorizers" who
serve as arbiters in case of dispute. The Hawala system
requires unbounded trust. Hawaladars are often members
of the same family, village, clan, or ethnic group. It is a
system older than the West. The ancient Chinese had their
own "Hawala" - "fei qian" (or "flying money"). Arab
traders used it to avoid being robbed on the Silk Road.
Cheating is punished by effective ex-communication and
"loss of honour" - the equivalent of an economic death
sentence. Physical violence is rarer but not unheard of.
Violence sometimes also erupts between money recipients
and robbers who are after the huge quantities of physical
cash sloshing about the system. But these, too, are rare
events, as rare as bank robberies. One result of this
effective social regulation is that commodity traders in
Asia shift hundreds of millions of US dollars per trade
based solely on trust and the verbal commitment of their
counterparts.
Hawala arrangements are used to avoid customs duties,
consumption taxes, and other trade-related levies.
Suppliers provide importers with lower prices on their
invoices, and get paid the difference via Hawala.
Legitimate transactions and tax evasion constitute the bulk
of Hawala operations. Modern Hawala networks emerged
in the 1960's and 1970's to circumvent official bans on
gold imports in Southeast Asia and to facilitate the
transfer of hard earned wages of expatriates to their
families ("home remittances") and their conversion at
rates more favourable (often double) than the
government's. Hawala provides a cheap (it costs c. 1% of
the amount transferred), efficient, and frictionless
alternative to morbid and corrupt domestic financial
institutions. It is Western Union without the hi-tech gear
and the exorbitant transfer fees.
Unfortunately, these networks have been hijacked and
compromised by drug traffickers (mainly in Afganistan
and Pakistan), corrupt officials, secret services, money
launderers, organized crime, and terrorists. Pakistani
Hawala networks alone move up to 5 billion US dollars
annually according to estimates by Pakistan's Minister of
Finance, Shaukut Aziz. In 1999, Institutional Investor
Magazine identified 1100 money brokers in Pakistan and
transactions that ran as high as 10 million US dollars
apiece. As opposed to stereotypes, most Hawala networks
are not controlled by Arabs, but by Indian and Pakistani
expatriates and immigrants in the Gulf. The Hawala
network in India has been brutally and ruthlessly
demolished by Indira Ghandi (during the emergency
regime imposed in 1975), but Indian nationals still play a
big part in international Hawala networks. Similar
networks in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Bangladesh
have also been eradicated.
The OECD's Financial Action Task Force (FATF) says
that:
"Hawala remains a significant method for large
numbers of businesses of all sizes and individuals to
repatriate funds and purchase gold.... It is favoured
because it usually costs less than moving funds through
the banking system, it operates 24 hours per day and
every day of the year, it is virtually completely reliable,
and there is minimal paperwork required."
(Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and
Development (OECD), "Report on Money Laundering
Typologies 1999-2000," Financial Action Task Force,
FATF-XI, February 3, 2000, at
http://www.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/TY2000_en.pdf )
Hawala networks closely feed into Islamic banks
throughout the world and to commodity trading in South
Asia. There are more than 200 Islamic banks in the USA
alone and many thousands in Europe, North and South
Africa, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states (especially in the free
zone of Dubai and in Bahrain), Pakistan, Malaysia,
Indonesia, and other South East Asian countries. By the
end of 1998, the overt (read: tip of the iceberg) liabilities
of these financial institutions amounted to 148 billion US
dollars. They dabbled in equipment leasing, real estate
leasing and development, corporate equity, and
trade/structured trade and commodities financing (usually
in consortia called "Mudaraba").
While previously confined to the Arab peninsula and to
south and east Asia, this mode of traditional banking
became truly international in the 1970's, following the
unprecedented flow of wealth to many Moslem nations
due to the oil shocks and the emergence of the Asian
tigers. Islamic banks joined forces with corporations,
multinationals, and banks in the West to finance oil
exploration and drilling, mining, and agribusiness. Many
leading law firms in the West (such as Norton Rose,
Freshfields, Clyde and Co. and Clifford Chance) have
"Islamic Finance" teams which are familiar with Islam-
compatible commercial contracts.
II. HAWALA AND TERRORISM
Recent anti-terrorist legislation in the US and the UK
allows government agencies to regularly supervise and
inspect businesses that are suspected of being a front for
the ''Hawala'' banking system, makes it a crime to
smuggle more than $10,000 in cash across USA borders,
and empowers the Treasury secretary (and its Financial
Crimes Enforcement Network - FinCEN) to tighten
record-keeping and reporting rules for banks and financial
institutions based in the USA. A new inter-agency Foreign
Terrorist Asset Tracking Center (FTAT) was set up. A
1993 moribund proposed law requiring US-based
Halawadar to register and to report suspicious transactions
may be revived. These relatively radical measures reflect
the belief that the al-Qaida network of Osama bin Laden
uses the Hawala system to raise and move funds across
national borders. A Hawaladar in Pakistan (Dihab Shill)
was identified as the financier in the attacks on the
American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
But the USA is not the only country to face terrorism
financed by Hawala networks.
In mid-2001, the Delhi police, the Indian government's
Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the Military
Intelligence (MI) arrested six Jammu Kashmir Islamic
Front (JKIF) terrorists. The arrests led to the exposure of
an enormous web of Hawala institutions in Delhi, aided
and abetted, some say, by the ISI (Inter Services
Intelligence, Pakistan's security services). The Hawala
network was used to funnel money to terrorist groups in
the disputed Kashmir Valley.
Luckily, the common perception that Hawala financing is
paperless is wrong. The transfer of information regarding
the funds often leaves digital (though heavily encrypted)
trails. Couriers and "contract memorizers", gold dealers,
commodity merchants, transporters, and moneylenders
can be apprehended and interrogated. Written, physical,
letters are still the favourite mode of communication
among small and medium Hawaladars, who also
invariably resort to extremely detailed single entry
bookkeeping. And the sudden appearance and
disappearance of funds in bank accounts still have to be
explained. Moreover, the sheer scale of the amounts
involved entails the collaboration of off shore banks and
more established financial institutions in the West. Such
flows of funds affect the local money markets in Asia and
are instantaneously reflected in interest rates charged to
frequent borrowers, such as wholesalers. Spending and
consumption patterns change discernibly after such
influxes. Most of the money ends up in prime world banks
behind flimsy business facades. Hackers in Germany
claimed (without providing proof) to have infiltrated
Hawala-related bank accounts.
The problem is that banks and financial institutions - and
not only in dodgy offshore havens ("black holes" in the
lingo) - clam up and refuse to divulge information about
their clients. Banking is largely a matter of fragile trust
between bank and customer and tight secrecy. Bankers are
reluctant to undermine either. Banks use mainframe
computers which can rarely be hacked through cyberspace
and can be compromised only physically in close co-
operation with insiders. The shadier the bank - the more
formidable its digital defenses. The use of numbered
accounts (outlawed in Austria, for instance, only recently)
and pseudonyms (still possible in Lichtenstein)
complicates matters. Bin Laden's accounts are unlikely to
bear his name. He has collaborators.
Hawala networks are often used to launder money, or to
evade taxes. Even when employed for legitimate
purposes, to diversify the risk involved in the transfer of
large sums, Hawaladars apply techniques borrowed from
money laundering. Deposits are fragmented and wired to
hundreds of banks the world over ("starburst").
Sometimes, the money ends up in the account of origin
("boomerang").
Hence the focus on payment clearing and settlement
systems. Most countries have only one such system, the
repository of data regarding all banking (and most non-
banking) transactions in the country. Yet, even this is a
partial solution. Most national systems maintain records
for 6-12 months, private settlement and clearing systems
for even less.
Yet, the crux of the problem is not the Hawala or the
Hawaladars. The corrupt and inept governments of Asia
are to blame for not regulating their banking systems, for
over-regulating everything else, for not fostering
competition, for throwing public money at bad debts and
at worse borrowers, for over-taxing, for robbing people of
their life savings through capital controls, for tearing at
the delicate fabric of trust between customer and bank
(Pakistan, for instance, froze all foreign exchange
accounts two years ago). Perhaps if Asia had reasonably
expedient, reasonably priced, reasonably regulated, user-
friendly banks - Osama bin Laden would have found it
impossible to finance his mischief so invisibly.