WhatsApp Chat With 532 Members Moved Hundreds of Millions in Cash, Funded ISIS and Smuggling Rings, EBU Investigation Finds

A WhatsApp group chat named Traders of Greater Europe moved hundreds of millions of euros in cash across borders between late February and December 2022, funding organized crime, human smuggling and Islamic State militants, according to an investigation by the European Broadcasting Union's investigative journalism network, which includes the BBC.

The group had 532 members. Investigators recovered more than 82,000 messages, mostly written in Arabic, coordinating cash transfers to destinations including Birmingham and London, according to the BBC. In one case, payments sent from Brussels reached Islamic State militants in Syria, where the money helped fund efforts to break the wives of foreign fighters out of Kurdish-run detention camps, according to reporting from albeu and bellenews.

Belgian investigating magistrate Vincent Guerra first uncovered the network while probing terror financing. He told the BBC the number of transactions was "staggering" and that the operation covered "the entire planet." What started as one case, he said, "became just a drop in the ocean of transactions."

How the money moved without moving

The network ran on hawala, a centuries-old trust-based transfer system. One broker, or hawaladar, takes cash from a sender in one country. A partner broker in another country pays the equivalent amount, minus a commission, to the recipient. No money physically crosses a border. No bank record is created. The two brokers settle their own books later.

Hawala is attractive to migrant workers sending money home to countries with little banking infrastructure. It's also attractive to people who don't want the SWIFT system flagging a suspicious wire transfer. Banks are legally required to report unusual large transactions. Hawala brokers, operating outside that system, aren't.

The Traders of Greater Europe group was reserved for transfers over €5,000, and the BBC reports many payments ran far higher. Hawala is illegal in most EU countries but legal in the UK, provided brokers register with HM Revenue and Customs.

The Brussels bust

The chat logs surfaced after Belgian authorities arrested Abu Adam, described as the head of the Brussels network, and his deputy Abu Ahmed. According to bellenews, forensic teams pulled 6,000 photos of €5 notes and 6,000 identity documents off Abu Adam's seized phone, evidence investigators say points to at least 12,000 discrete international transactions. Six people connected to the network, including Abu Adam and Abu Ahmed, were convicted in a 2024 Belgian court case, which is how the EBU obtained the underlying WhatsApp cache.

It wasn't limited to Belgium

The EBU found similar hawala-based networks operating elsewhere in Europe. A former money launderer identified only as Frank told the network he'd personally handled hundreds of millions of euros in transactions, describing an office outside Rotterdam where five or six messengers delivered at least a million euros in cash in under two hours. "What I found out later is that it's not just about money," he said, according to Symplexia News. "It's about the financing of terror. It's about drug trafficking. It's about prostitution."

In Austria, police raided what they called the country's largest hawala office, run out of a Vienna kebab restaurant, according to reporting from Austrian broadcaster ORF cited by Symplexia News. Two Syrian brothers who ran it were convicted last year and sentenced to 18 and 8 years respectively, not just for human trafficking but for torturing and raping a courier who claimed he'd been robbed of €350,000. Gerald Tatzgern, who leads human-trafficking investigations at Austria's Criminal Intelligence Service, told ORF that torture videos get sent straight to families back home as leverage: pay more, or "your son, your brother, your father will suffer." Separately, Austrian police and Europol dismantled another hawala-financed smuggling ring that authorities say moved roughly 100,000 people into Europe over 18 months.

The fair caveat

None of this means every hawala broker is a criminal or that every member of the 532-person chat knowingly financed terrorism. The BBC is explicit that "there is no indication that all those participating in the group were involved in handling criminal funds." Hawala remains a legitimate, and in the UK legal, way for immigrant workers to send remittances to families in countries where opening a bank account isn't realistic. Criminalizing an entire remittance method because bad actors exploited it would punish a lot of people doing nothing wrong.

An encrypted, untraceable cash network that Belgian prosecutors linked directly to Islamic State funding and that Austrian courts linked to trafficking, torture and rape is a documented regulatory concern, with convictions attached.

Only six people have been convicted so far, out of a chat with 532 members and transactions investigators say span the globe. Whether Belgian, Austrian or UK authorities pursue further prosecutions from the same 82,000-message cache is an open question the EBU investigation doesn't answer.