Rome: Italian police said on Monday they had caught four men who were accused of sending funds to people in Europe and the Middle East who gathered in the name of the Islamic State, in an investigation which caused a larger network of terrorism funding.
The four men were suspected of being a total 30,000 euro cable from the money transfer agent in the Southeast Italian City of Andria to 42 fund collectors for militants, in countries including Serbia, Germany, Turkey, Jordan and Russia.
The next investigation shows that the same 42 collectors have received as many as 1 million euros in suspicious transfers from other sources, said Luca Cioffi, a colonel in the Italian tax police.
Payments made by the men who were arrested on Monday including 5,000 euros were sent to two Russia, days before the attack on a church in South Russia which killed five women, Cioffi said.
Investigators are still trying to determine the source of funds, “the people who are arrested are currently unemployed and have no income, so that the investigation is still ongoing to identify who gives them money to send abroad,” Cioffi told Reuters.
The probe, led by the anti-mafia prosecutor in the regional capital Bari, began in 2017 after a tip-off of the Paris prosecutor each of the two 950 euro transfers each from a small institution in southern Italy which was considered by France to become a collector Money for foreign fighters in Syria.