A centuries-old informal money-transfer system used by millions of people for legitimate remittances is also moving vast sums for organized crime, an investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Austria has found. Known as hawala, the system allows value to cross borders without money necessarily moving between countries. A sender hands cash to a broker, or hawaladar, who contacts a trusted counterpart elsewhere to pay the recipient. The brokers settle their accounts later, often through other transactions, cash or valuables. Its speed and accessibility make hawala particularly important in countries where conventional banking is limited or unreliable. But the same features also make the system attractive to criminal groups. The investigation, coordinated by the EBU Investigative Journalism Network, found hawala networks linked to drug trafficking, migrant smuggling, money laundering and terrorist financing. Belgian journalists tested the system by handing €250 to a broker in Brussels. Shortly afterwards, a journalist in Gaza collected the equivalent amount in Israeli shekels, without being asked for identification. Investigators in Spain and Austria also uncovered networks allegedly connected to migrant smuggling, while Europol says individual criminal brokers can move enormous sums each year. The challenge for European police is that transactions often leave few formal records, and investigations frequently cross several jurisdictions. Authorities are therefore increasingly focusing on the brokers themselves as potential weak points in the system. A TVP World report previously detailed a Europol-backed operation targeting a Middle Eastern migrant-smuggling network active across Poland, Germany and Belgium.
