Waleed Ahmed Zein: The Dangerous Terrorist Financier of Kenya

Waleed Ahmed Zein: The Dangerous Terrorist Financier of Kenya

In July 2018, Kenya’s anti-terrorist police unit stormed a terrorist network suspected to be conducting financial operations for Islamic State (IS). After the operation, Waleed Ahmed Zein was identified as the network’s top leader.

A 27-year-old man from the coastal city of Mombasa, Zein had allegedly used associates to conduct extensive transactions, which included receiving money from around the world. His father, Ahmed Zein Ahmed, a prominent businessman who dealt with motor vehicle spare parts in Mombasa, is prominent in terror circles, where he is known as Abu Waleed (KBC, July 5, 2018).

The young Zein reportedly established a worldwide network to move money for IS, which he and other terror financiers had sourced through their global connections. The network spanned Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and East Africa (Daily Nation, September 9, 2018).

By the time Kenyan police discovered the network, IS had already established a presence in East Africa and was gaining ground. At the time, the Middle East terror organization is believed to have viewed Africa as strategic landing point, after losing control of most of its territory in Iraq and Syria.

The signs of the group’s presence in East Africa began emerging in 2015, when Shaykh Abdulkadir Mumin—an ideologue formerly associated with al-Shabaab—defected from the al-Qaeda affiliate and declared allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Mumin and a small band of fighters moved to a mountainous region in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland, from which they have conducted some low-level attacks (Citizen Digital, April 16).

Since then, the group has reportedly maintained a small, determined and loyal cell in the region. Under the leadership of Mumin, the group has been radicalizing and recruiting youths while establishing cells within the East Africa region.

In September, the Ethiopian national intelligence service said it had evidence that IS had recruited, trained and armed some Ethiopians to carry out terror attacks. A senior intelligence official said the group had for many years tried to recruit in the Horn of Africa nation. One source of its terror recruits is al-Shabaab—the al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, whose fighters IS has been poaching and integrating into its fighting force (Strategic Intelligence, April 3; AfricaNews, September 23).

Zein conducted his financing operation through hawala, an informal banking system which is often used to move money in countries where formal banking is ineffective or does not exist. War-torn Somalia is one such example.

In recent times, the system has allegedly been used to facilitate money laundering and financing of terrorism, since there is no effective way to track it. Recently, its use in Somalia as a form of remittance has come under sharp focus over fears that it was being used by terrorists to fund their activities. In 2015, the U.S. Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs cited hawala in Somalia over concerns that it was financing terrorists and their activities in East Africa (Strategic Intelligence, April 20, 2015; Standard Digital, April 18,).

Zein sent an estimated $150,000 to IS fighters in Syria, Libya and Central Africa between early 2017 and June 2018 through the method. He allegedly paid Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) at least once, according to a report by New York University’s Congo Research Group  (Standard Digital, April 18).

The money was deposited in his personal account and declared as proceeds from his father’s automobile spare parts business in Mombasa. He used intermediaries to avoid detection and evade arrest (Daily Nation, September 9, 2018).

In July 2018, however, the police caught up with him, arresting Zein and charging him with financing terrorism.  One of his key associates was identified as Halima Adan Ali, a 34-year-old female Islamist militant—also from the coastal city of Mombasa (See MLM, July 2).

Ali was shaped into another financier, supporter, and recruiter. She has emerged at a time when the role of women as facilitators of terrorist activities has become a key focus of both local and international security actors across the world.

Alongside Ali, Zein was accused of facilitating terrorism and providing property for commission of terrorism. He was later released on a $10,000 bond and asked to hand over his travel documents to the court.

The money for the bond came through his father Ahmed, who channeled funds through sympathizers from Syria, where he has been based since 2014.

It believed that the bond payment was made on the orders of Ahmed, who after paying the bond encouraged Ali, the female jihad financier, to switch her allegiances from al-Shabaab to IS.

Driven by common interests, there are also indications that Ali and Zein built a bond that could lead to marriage. The plan was to allegedly travel to Syria after getting married, but the arrests thwarted those plans (KBC, July 5, 2018).

For some years, Zein worked as a long-distance truck driver in East Africa, a job that allowed him to travel through a number of African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo. The long-distance trips between Mombasa and Kinshasa—which include stopovers in Kampala, Kigali and Goma and are often undertaken at night—masked his activities as a terror financier.

In Mombasa, he had ran a fleet of Tuk Tuks, the motorized auto-rickshaws commonly which are used for human transport and goods in Asia and South America and more recently have become common in Africa. He also worked in a brokerage firm in Nairobi’s central business district. Details of his work with that firm have remained scanty (KBC, July 5, 2018).

In September 2018, the U.S. government placed sanctions on Zein. The State Department listed him as a dangerous terrorist on the accusation that he headed a global network of financial facilitators for IS. The sanctions blocked Zein from any finances or property he may directly own in the U.S. (Daily Nation, September 9, 2018).

With reports that Zein had established a worldwide network to move money for IS in Africa, it is a clear indication that the terror group is gaining a foothold in the continent. The terror funds were sourced through a global network in which Zein allegedly used associates to transact, receive and move the money around the world. His use of the hawala system calls for greater restrictions on the method of transferring funds and other transactions, including through banks. Otherwise, every cent that goes to a terrorist increases their ability to carry out an attack. Initially it was al-Shabaab, which is known to rely on such transfers, and now IS. Governments, security experts and experts in terrorism have to move with urgency to respond to this situation.