"To throttle the financing of terrorist organizations and terrorist attacks is crucial if we are to succeed in the fight against terrorism," Angelica Wallmark, department chief at the Financial Police said in a statement.
Over 300 Swedish-born extremists are estimated to have left the country to fight in conflict areas in the Middle East, one of the highest proportions of "terrorism export" per capita in Europe. Unsurprisingly, suspicions of terrorist financing have also increased dramatically.
During the second half of 2014, transaction bans were imposed, lowering total one-time transaction values to just over 3.4 million krona (roughly $400,000 dollars). In 2015, a total of 72 bans were imposed, limiting withdraws to a value of just over 7.2 krona million krona (roughly $900,000).
"This means that finance police can temporarily suspend a suspicious transaction at an earlier stage, which often proves crucial," Angelica Wallmark said.
In 2015, Estonia topped the list of suspicious money transfers to Sweden, while Nigeria and Ghana accounted for the most suspicious money transfers from Sweden. Remarkably, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland are the undoubted leaders with respect to the volume of suspicious transactions to and from Sweden.
Besides the risk of "imported" terrorism, the risk of home-grown radicalism has been mounting in Sweden. Earlier, only seven percent of municipalities actually coped with the task of assessing the risk of terrorism and working out an action plan, whereas one fourth admitted that violent extremism existed, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported in April.
