Stricter controls over student loans and payday loans have been called for by security experts after it has been reported that ISIS could be using these to help fund terrorist attacks.
The report by Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an independent think-tank, found that many terrorist attacks have effectively been carried out ‘on the cheap’, with a number of cases for terror plots in the UK already exposed.
Low-budget, ‘lone wolf’ attacks have supposedly been funded by student and payday loans, and although these deal in what seems like relatively minor sums, small individual terror attacks are cheap to fund. Student loans can result in as much as £8,000 being accessed, whilst for payday loans this can be £2,500, and available in your bank account after just 15 minutes.
According to RUSI, approximately 75 per cent of planned terrorist attacks by European jihadis between 1994 and 2013 cost just £6,380.
At the time of writing there is no monitoring or limitation on what students can spend their university loan, and the report therefore highlighted this issue and calls for more to be done. Tom Keatinge, the report’s author, said:
“Of course for the student loan company or payday lender, identifying what funds are being spent on is beyond their responsibility. But perhaps consideration should be given to placing restrictions on the way borrowed funds are spent.”
“For example, funds could be provided via prepaid cards with restrictions attached that allow them only to be used in certain shops, to pay for pre-agreed services, or settle registered bills,” he continued.
Oil resources in Syria and Iraq had been used to finance the terrorism group, but plummeting oil prices has resulted in these other avenues being considered.
