Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Davis

Terrorists need money ... to recruit and train people, to buy weapons, to maintain safe houses, to carry out attacks. Which raises the question: how do they procure and protect funds to finance their operations? In Illicit Money, Jessica Davis thoroughly answers that question.

Davis explores the full spectrum of terrorist finance, drawing on extensive case studies to dissect how individuals, cells, and organizations raise and manage, as well as hide, funds. In her concluding chapters, she considers both opportunities and challenges related to countering these illicit activities.

240 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Jessica Davis an international expert on terrorism and illicit financing, is President and Principal Consultant with Insight Threat Intelligence, and is President of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. She began her career in intelligence analysis with the Canadian Military, then transitioned to a policy role at Global Affairs Canada before becoming a team leader with Canada’s financial intelligence unit, FINTRAC. Jessica’s last role in government was as senior strategic analyst at CSIS responsible for threat financing and managing the Indicators of Mobilization to Violence project. She now works to bring evidence-based solutions to the private and public sectors to counter illicit financing and terrorism. Jessica is a PhD candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University studying counter-terrorist financing and has published extensively in the Globe and Mail, Just Security, Lawfare, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, Policy Options, and ICCT. She is most recently the author of Women in Modern Terrorism: From Liberations Wars to Global Terrorism and the Islamic State (2017), and Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the 21st Century (forthcoming with Lynne Rienner in 2021). Jessica is an associate fellow with GNET and RUSI’s CFCS and a SSHRC CGS Joseph Armand Bombardier scholar