In an effort to cut off al-Qaeda’s money flow, a secret US administration programme was created in 2001 to trace financial transactions of people suspected of having terrorist ties.
This involved the cooperation of Belgian-based financial services company SWIFT, which provided the US Department of the Treasury (UST) with access to large amounts of financial data emanating from financial institutions worldwide. When US newspapers revealed the existence of the programme in late June 2006, Belgian and European officials quickly denounced it, due to its secretive nature and European Union (EU) data protection law infringing operations.
