The hawala system is an informal, ledger-based money-transfer network used across the Middle East, South Asia, and their diasporas. Per John Kiriakou — who later, as Chief Investigator on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ran a study on hawala — it was one of the principal channels through which al-Qaeda moved operational money in the immediate post-9/11 period.[1]
Kiriakou’s $50 test
Kiriakou: “What I did, just to test it, was I walked into a little grocery store — like one guy selling some fruits and vegetables — and I said, ‘I want to send $50 to the United States.’ And he said, ‘Where in the United States?’ I said, ‘Washington, D.C.’ He says, ‘Okay, give me the $50.’ I give him my $50. He gives me a 16-digit number just written by hand on a piece of paper, and he puts an address of an Arabic bakery in Bethesda, Maryland, and he says, ‘This is where you get your money.’”[2][3]
“So I fly back a week later. I take the subway up to Bethesda. I go into this Arabic bakery, and I said, ‘I need to talk to somebody about picking up some money,’ and I give him my 16-digit number. He looks in this ledger and he gives me whatever it was — $46 from my $50. Totally completely untraceable.”[3][4]
Scale and the DHL leg
Kiriakou: “I only did $50 just to see if it would work, and it worked. But they’re doing hundreds of thousands in a single transaction — they’re doing millions. And the way they move the money around is by DHL. DHL will still deliver boxes of money. FedEx won’t do it. UPS won’t do it. DHL will do it.”[4][5]