As you know, this is a war that is taking place along many fronts. One of the most important fronts of all is that of financial investigations.

The United States Customs Service, which I lead, is a law enforcement organization of 20,000 employees that has for years worked to disrupt and dismantle the money laundering techniques used by the world's drug cartels to launder narcotics proceeds.

U.S. Customs criminal investigators are well-trained in all types of financial crimes. Using a "systems-based approach," we target not only the individuals involved in money laundering -- those who finance and fund criminal activity -- but also the networks they use to carry out their criminal activities.

Now, we are turning this expertise full-force on terrorist organizations and their financial backers and supporters, and against those who help move money for terrorists.

You are among our greatest allies in this fight. Just as our military depends on good intelligence on the ground to strike enemy targets, so will law enforcement agencies like U.S. Customs rely on the financial intelligence you provide to find, freeze, and seize the assets of terrorists.

This is an extraordinarily important effort for the international coalition against the terrorists.

I'd like to speak to you a little today about some of the skills U.S. Customs brings to bear in the fight against terrorist money laundering, so that you might get a better picture of what it is we do. I also want to talk to you about Operation Greenquest, an important, anti-terrorist money laundering initiative that Customs is leading with the participation of other Treasury offices, including FINCEN.

Green Quest will combine our strengths in a more effective way, by melding the intelligence gathering abilities of FIUs like FINCEN with the investigative expertise of agencies like U.S. Customs, the IRS, and the U.S. Secret Service.

I'll elaborate more on that a bit later, but first, some background on Customs:

As I mentioned, Customs brings a long history of money laundering investigative work to the battle against terrorism.

In the early 1980s, Customs pioneered the first major money laundering investigation, Operation Greenback. Located in South Florida, Greenback was a hugely successful operation that targeted drug money-launderering.

Beginning with a focus on bulk cash smuggling, Greenback branched out through the use of asset forfeiture laws to seize not only cash, but the property and assets also used by the cartels to launder their proceeds -- money used to finance their illegal drug trade.

Some of you may recall a more recent U.S. Customs investigation, Operation Casablanca, which the agency concluded in 1998. That Operation, one of the largest money laundering investigations in the history of law enforcement, targeted a vast network of corrupt financial institutions in various Latin American nations that were laundering cash for the drug cartels.

As a result of Casablanca, Customs seized approximately 100 million dollars and six tons of narcotics, and made about 200 arrests.

But finding illegal funds and preventing our banking systems from being used to further organized criminal activity is not the only thing we do. One of the more unique aspects of Customs mission is its expertise in identifying trade-based money laundering schemes.

These include the infamous Black Market Peso Exchange, or BMPE, in which special money brokers working on behalf of the drug cartels exchange drug dollars in the U.S. for pesos abroad, mainly by exploiting American companies.

Other traffickers master complicated forms of trade fraud. They overvalue or undervalue merchandise. They use double invoicing. They fabricate shipments. And U.S. Customs is also involved in this investigative aspect of organized criminal activity too.

Our dual mission to facilitate trade and enforce laws gives us access to vast amounts of financial and trade data. In the trade area, we can look at the import and export history for tens of thousands of companies. We can cross-reference that information against other records and various law enforcement databases through special applications developed by Customs employees. That allows us to spot trends and anomalies in a company’s activities.

Could terrorist organizations employ trade-based schemes to mask funding sources?

We suspect they do.

It is no coincidence that the U.S. Treasury Department now has three Yemen-based honey businesses on the list of companies tied to Osama Bin Laden.

Other drug traffickers and terrorists may resort to simpler methods of money laundering, such as Bulk Cash Smuggling. New anti-money laundering laws signed by President Bush strengthen the laws against those who smuggle concealed cash out of the country, above the $10,000 dollar allowable amount.

Prior to this new legislation, the smuggling of cash was mainly a reporting offense. The new statute provides for criminal forfeiture of the property involved, and outlines more stringent penalties against violators.

Customs has taken its own, aggressive measures to combat bulk cash smuggling into and out of the U.S. Outbound inspections alone of persons and vehicles have resulted in currency seizures over the past six years of close to $340 million dollars.

Still, good intelligence is the foundation of any successful investigation.

For years, Customs has relied on the information provided by financial institutions to drive key money laundering investigations. This includes the use of Special, or Suspicious Activity Reports that banks are required to file, otherwise known as SARs.

In New York, for example, SAR-initiated investigations have led to the arrest of dozens of criminals and the recovery of $62 million dollars over the last four years alone. They were also instrumental in moving Operation Casablanca forward.

We also try to look creatively at other money laundering means criminals use.

A few years ago, Customs discovered dirty money moving through the wire remitter industry. These so-called "mom and pop" shops allowed drug smugglers to fly under the radar by enabling them to wire small amounts of drug cash, in multiple transactions, to foreign locations.

An analysis of the industry by the U.S. Customs Service led to the establishment of Geographic Targeting Orders, or GTOs, which imposed stricter reporting requirements on certain money remitters in the New York area. Specifically, that order changed the reporting requirement of all transmissions to Colombia from 10,000 dollars to 750 dollars.

As the GTOs pressured money launderers on one front, investigators pressured them on another. These cases resulted in more than 130 arrests and the seizure of $50 million in drug cash. Most importantly, the wire remittance system was returned to honest users and eliminated as a source of money laundering for the cartels.

As this investigation demonstrated, the use of mandatory reporting requirements can be extremely effective. We have also encouraged banks, financial services groups, and others to partner with us in creating a free flow of information regarding potential financial crimes.

That’s an atmosphere we would like to see replicated around the world. The bottom line is that our global war on terrorism mandates that we tear down the intelligence-sharing walls that may have previously existed between law enforcement agencies themselves and the public and private sector. We need information to act on, and we need it by any and all means.

That’s why the Treasury Department created Operation Green Quest. What is Operation Green Quest?

Green Quest is a multi-agency task force targeted against terrorist organizations. It is aimed at freezing and seizing accounts and assets of terrorist organizations - not just those groups associated with the attacks of September 11th, but all the related entities that pose a threat to the United States and to all nations of the world.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as you know, were not just attacks on America; they were attacks on the people of the world. People from dozens of countries were in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th, and they were murdered.

Green Quest brings the money laundering investigative expertise of the Treasury agencies to bear on terrorist networks and their financial supporters. As I mentioned, it is led by Customs, and includes the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control and FINCEN.

The Operation also draws on the new Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, and will be supported by the FBI and federal prosecutors from the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.

I have named a senior U.S. Customs special agent as the Director of Operation Green Quest. An IRS criminal investigative agent will serve as Deputy Director.

Green Quest will operate through two components: a command and coordination center here at Customs Headquarters in Washington, and a field task force made up of dedicated and experienced agents in New York.

These agents have been drawn from a long-term, highly successful money laundering initiative based in New York known as Operation El Dorado.

This 200-person task force has been devoted to money laundering and financial crimes since 1992. Since its inception, it has seized nearly 500 million dollars in criminal proceeds.

Drawing on the formidable experience of Customs and IRS agents who have worked money laundering cases in New York and elsewhere, Green Quest will supply the investigative muscle and expertise to identify, freeze, and seize the accounts and assets of terrorist organizations and their supporters. This operation will also generate new information on sources of terrorist funding and the systems used to fund terrorist activities. In short, Operation Green Quest will deprive terrorist organizations of the financial means to carry out their activities in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.

Working through FINCEN, we will hope to make FIUs an integral part of this effort. While Green Quest is nominally made up of U.S. law enforcement agencies, it must have a global reach to be effective.

Terrorist fundraising, and the activities it spawns, recognize no borders. Neither can we.

Forums such as this one underscore the need to build a worldwide, anti-money laundering network. We must devise strategies that cut across and integrate the information-gathering expertise of organizations like those gathered here today. As our experience has taught us, nothing less than an aggressive, comprehensive approach to money laundering systems can address this problem.

At U.S. Customs, we are fully committed - not only to a global campaign against terrorism and its financial support - but to waging that campaign on as broad a front and as effectively as possible. We cannot do that without the support of our allies, without the commitment of the men and women charged with protecting the world’s financial systems.

In other words, we cannot do it without you.

Thank you.