World-Check’s Terrorism List Continues to Outpace Government Alerts

LONDON – World-Check, the leading provider of structured intelligence on heightened risk individuals and entities, made public today statistics that not only reveal the depth of World-Check's terrorism research, but also underscore the danger that institutions face from relying on government-released terrorism alerts alone.

World-Check's Terrorism and Insurgency Research Unit (TIRU) has to date identified and profiled over 17,000 terrorism-related individuals and entities. To place this in perspective, the four most authoritative government sanctions issuing bodies, namely the US OFAC, UK Bank of England, the EU and UN, have only listed approximately 800 unique terrorism-related entries(i) — making up only 5% of World-Check's overall terrorism-related content.

"The breadth and depth of intelligence World-Check has been able to compile is simply astonishing, and it reflects the relentless dedication of our research teams," said David Leppan, CEO of World-Check. "Over 2,000 institutions and several hundred government and enforcement agencies use our highly structured data in order to uncover hidden risk. We are extremely proud of what we have achieved thus far and will continue to invest in technology and people in order to deliver critical information that will keep our clients out of trouble and terrorists out of the system."

World-Check's TIRU is made up of open source intelligence specialists from around the world that monitor global terrorism and insurgency. The unit collects publicly available information from governments, non-governmental organizations, academia and global media including 'grey literature'(ii) in multiple languages including: Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, Tajik, Russian, Farsi, Tamil, Turkish, Korean, Chinese and Bahasa, amongst others. It uses an analytic method that highlights risk, identification and funding information. Discerning terrorist financing "signatures" or patterns of specific terrorist organisations is a core task. Mapping relationships among various overlapping transnational criminal networks is another. To help this effort, TIRU is strategically placed around the globe to give World-Check clients around the clock terrorism coverage.

"It is extraordinary to have such a vast array of backgrounds and expertise in-house." said John Solomon, Global Head of World-Check's TIRU. "Our research analysts not only have advanced degrees from some of the world's best universities, they also have the requisite local knowledge and language skills that afford valuable insight into ground-level realities." Solomon continued, "The team is driven by the fact that they know their work makes a difference. That enthusiasm is infectious and makes for a proactive ethos that is reflected in this unprecedented database."

This constant and specialised investigative work has earned World-Check a distinguished record of alerting its clients to terrorists and their supporters prior to their inclusion in official government lists. Recent examples include: Radulan Sahiron, leader of the terrorist organisation Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), profiled in World-Check in August 2002, but only added to OFAC's list of Special Designated Terrorists in November 2005; Sobhi Mahmoud Fayad, South American-based Hezbollah financier and facilitator, profiled in World-Check in January 2004, but only added to government lists in December 2006; Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, described by the US Treasury as "Jemaah Islamiyah's top leader", profiled in World-Check in March 2002 over four years ahead of his inclusion in the US watch list; and Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, mastermind of the October 2002 Bali bombing attack profiled in World-Check five months prior in May 2002. Isamuddin was only added to official US lists in January 2003.

Whilst Al-Qaeda, its associated groups and affiliated cells feature most prominently in international media, World-Check also covers other movements that use terrorism as a political tool. World-Check monitors violent animal rights extremists and ethno-nationalist groups such as the Tamil Tigers, ETA and the IRA, to name but a few. To give some indication of the extent of this coverage, EU sanction lists have 28 entries related to the Spanish terrorist group ETA; in contrast, World-Check has highly-structured profiles for 1,234 ETA-related entries.

Dr Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror" and one of the world's leading authorities on terrorism, said: "The number of personalities linked to terrorism in the World-Check database surpasses the terrorist lists in many government counterterrorism databases. To identify terrorists and their active supporters, World-Check is an invaluable tool for counter terrorism practitioners and analysts."

For more information, please visit www.world-check.com