One of the greatest challenges we face in the War on Terror is halting the financial support making its way to terrorist organizations around the world. While Congress has significantly improved our ability to monitor and disrupt the financing of terrorist activities since 2001, terrorists’ proven track record of moving money through increasingly innovative means requires that we continue to strengthen this critical counterterrorism area.

Because the threat of terrorism knows no borders, so too our response must be international in scope. To that end, we as a nation have undertaken a global strategy to work with our allies to disrupt the financing of terrorism by identifying and blocking the sources of funding for terrorism, freezing the assets of terrorists and those who support them, denying terrorists access to the international financial system, and preventing the movement of terrorists’ assets through alternative financial networks.

The framework for our anti-terror financing efforts is based on the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). As our national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), FinCEN and over 90 other FIUs from around the globe share information on suspected sources of terrorist financing through bodies such as the Egmont Group.

Additionally, the U.S. is a part of the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body whose purpose is the development and promotion of national and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

Working collectively, and with member-country central banks, we recently witnessed the success of this international strategy at work. This past June, Pakistan’s Finance Bill, which contains various provisions intended to enhance transparency and improve anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws, was sent before the Pakistani parliament. Similarly, in July, Argentina signed into law a bill that expands the powers of its FIU to address terrorism financing through money laundering operations. And Jordan, responding to international concerns, has also pledged to adopt similar legislation. These are important steps in our efforts to halt the flow of money on an international level. However, there is much more work left to be done.

At the start of this session, I was named the Democratic chairman of the Task Force on Terrorism and Proliferation Financing. Together with co-chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and fellow members of the bipartisan task force, we are working to strengthen our national anti-terrorist finance strategy in part by hosting discussions with security and finance experts and representatives from the departments of State, Treasury and Justice. In furtherance of this effort, the Financial Services Committee held two hearings this spring. The first hearing addressed the issue of isolating proliferators and sponsors of terror through the use of sanctions. The second addressed the production of Suspicious Activity and Currency Transaction Reports as a tool used by FinCEN. Following that hearing, I joined Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and ranking member Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) in requesting that the Government Accountability Office examine the effectiveness of these reports and other aspects of FinCEN, as we look to strengthen our system to be the most efficient and effective financial crimes unit in the world.

While we have traveled to meet with Treasury and banking officials in Jordan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan to encourage greater vigilance against terrorist financing, I am mindful that we at home must also make our best efforts to curb terrorist financing in this country. To address this concern, I have sponsored the FinCEN Reauthorization Act of 2007 (H.R. 2440), legislation that would ensure that FinCEN’s important national security work is properly funded through fiscal 2012. The House Financial Services Committee is scheduled to address this legislation in October.

I have also cosponsored the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act (H.R. 2136) that would subject offshore tax havens to U.S. tax laws and increase the powers of Treasury to deal with offshore trusts and companies. Importantly, this bill would give the Treasury Department more access to knowledge of Americans involved in these offshore activities.

These proposals are common-sense, practical measures that will significantly improve our ability to track funds intended for terrorist organizations, and prevent those funds from reaching their destination. The 9/11 Commission Report suggests that real progress has been made in the last six years, but also warns that we must keep counterterrorism financing efforts front and center. As a bipartisan group, the Task Force on Terrorism and Proliferation Financing is working to ensure this happens.

 Lynch is a member of the House Financial Services Committee.