The Tiger tale of the TRO

In the light of the Sri Lankan government’s proscription of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation on charges it is a front for the LTTE, an international crackdown on Tamil Tiger financing is underway by the United States, Canada, Britain and France. The US Federal Bureau of Investigations, Britain’s Scotland Yard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the French Directorate of Counter Terrorism are cracking down on the Tiger operations and are now to freeze their bank accounts amounting to millions of dollars.

An Interpol official, who spoke to The Sunday Times from its headquarters in Lyon in France, said several Interpol agents were assisting the detectives from other countries in tracing the LTTE funds and cracking down on Tiger operatives.“We have learnt that the LTTE has been having a major terrorist network which has gone undetected for sometime. We have also ascertained information about their connections with other terrorist organisations. Upon the intelligence gathered by Interpol, several countries have decided to crack down on the Tigers,” he said.

So far several bank accounts belonging to key Tiger operatives in Canada, France, Britain, the US and Australia have been frozen. Recently, in a declassified intelligence report released by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, it said that in the wake of the death of the LTTE political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan, the LTTE had been conducting a rigorous propaganda campaign in Canada to win the support of politicians.

“The main targets of the campaign in Canada have been the expatriate Tamil population, politicians and the general public,” the report said. "The LTTE's responses to external criticism and internal dissent have included beatings, death threats and smear campaigns in Canada and elsewhere, and specific and non-specific threats of harm against Canadian citizens and residents, their businesses and possessions, and their relatives in Sri Lanka," the report said.

It said Canadian Tamils who do not support the cause of the LTTE were subjected to violation of their human rights."Murders have occurred in other Western countries, but are not known to have occurred in Canada. Tamils who fail to support the LTTE have been labelled as 'traitors.' Tamil victims have been reluctant to come forward to the police with regard to these activities due to their fear of retribution,” the report stated.

It stressed that fund raising campaigns had been the chief LTTE activity in Canada and that according to estimates, 95 per cent of the LTTE's operational revenue was generated outside Sri Lanka. Previously, the TRO in Canada had changed its name to the World Tamil Movement when it was coming under scrutiny by the Canadian authorities who suspected money being laundered through illegal channels to Sri Lanka.

This eventually led to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to carry out an operation code named Osaluki which was focused on the activities carried out by LTTE front organisations. The RCMP handed over its first report to the Canadian government on July 19 last year. The evidence produced in an Ontario court led to the immediate issue of search warrants to probe the operations of the World Tamil Movement (WTM), a registered non-profit organization, which had its offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

At present the RCMP officers, in a bid to crack down on these Tiger operatives, have frozen WTM accounts estimated at 4 million Canadian dollars. Britain has also stepped up efforts by freezing several bank accounts belonging to LTTE front organizations. According to detectives of the Scotland Yard, the British authorities have frozen nearly 2 million pounds belonging to Tamil charity organizations which are believed to be LTTE fronts.

TRO had previously been de-listed by the UK Charities Commission and had come under investigations. However, the TRO had changed its name and had also divided itself into several other Tamil charity organizations that act as LTTE fronts to go undetected in their fund-raising campaign, investigators claim.

This week’s Sri Lanka ban on the TRO comes in the wake of the US Department of Treasury on November 15 announcing the U.S.-bound assets of the TRO would be frozen. The TRO is known to be the conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the US Treasury Department said.

“The TRO has facilitated LTTE procurement operations in the United States. Those operations included the purchase of munitions, equipment, communication devices and other technology for the LTTE,” US Ambassador Robert Blake said soon after the funds were frozen.

The TRO was designated under Executive Order 13224, which is aimed at financially isolating terrorist groups and their support networks. Upon designation, all assets of the group held under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. persons are prohibited from dealing with the group.

According to recent findings, international NGOs operating in areas of LTTE controlled Wanni region were instructed to provide project funding through local NGOs, which were communally managed by the TRO. The TRO then had the authority to withdraw money from the local NGO accounts and to provide a portion of the relief funds to the LTTE, investigators claim. In the presence of resistance to this agreement, the LTTE had reportedly exerted pressure on a few international NGOs.

The LTTE has been designated by the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization since 2001 and a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997. The TRO headquarters in Kilinochchi operated branch offices throughout Sri Lanka and in seventeen countries worldwide, including the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.