Offshore Banking Legislature: United States Seeks To Bankrupt Terrorists

Financial centers play a major role in the United States economic system. Just recently Americans became aware of how much of a role they play in terrorism. Reliable sources estimates that Al Qaeda and its associates require $35 million to $40 million per year to remain intact (Morgenthau 1). Therefore, an effective weapon against terrorism would be to freeze terrorist group’s banking accounts. Due to offshore banking and no current legislature, this has become nearly impossible.

Earlier this year, the United States was ready to tighten the reigns, along with thirty other nations, on offshore financial centers. Then President Bush took office. Officials from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity had a talk with Bush economic advisers Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard, urging them place the United States’ support behind the many tax havens. The center argued Americans should be free to seek lower tax rates and the fact that competition from tax havens would keep tax rates lower in the United States.

Other lobbyists joined with the same arguments, and by June, they got what they wanted. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill announced to the l

After the tragic acts of terrorism rang through the United States a month ago, this subject has returned from the dead. It has become apparent to the United States and the Bush Administration that in order to halt Osama bin Laden and his organization, they must grab a hold of his purse strings. President Bush has ordered that the accounts of 66 individuals and organizations thought to have connections with terrorism be frozen. This is easier said than done, since his cash is stowed away in offshore bank accounts and tax havens. These offshore jurisdictions maintain confidential banking centers that are plugged into the financial systems of the United States, thus giving terrorists in the United States access to money, yet the accounts cannot be identified (Morgenthau 1).

Bombs can be dropped and lives can be lost, but as long as the terrorists have financial backing, the war against terrorism will continue. Everyone has heard the old saying “money makes the world go around.” It’s a known fact that without millions of dollars, terrorists can not build training camps, supply weapons to armies, or establish and run laboratories used to create biological warfare. The United States has to unite as a nation to establish and pass the necessary legislature to assure the monies and assets of terrorists, their leaders and organizations can be monitored and trace

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