ROME, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Over 100,000 suspicious financial transactions were flagged in Italy in 2016, the Bank of Italy's Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) said Monday.
Of these, 619 transactions were flagged as possible terrorist financing, an 127 percent increase compared to 2015, the UIF wrote in its 2016 annual report.
The report said 37 percent of the suspicious transactions were related to individuals under investigation or otherwise flagged by authorities, and about one-fifth were related to non-profit organizations that were "mostly linked to local immigrant communities".
The UIF's definition of an anomaly includes unusual amounts of money being transferred, a change in the frequency of such operations, and the kind and the location of the receiving counterpart.
These included money transfers abroad "to geographical areas that are held to be at high risk of terrorism", i.e. are marked by political instability and/or border on conflict areas, according to the UIF report.
"The significant increase in reports of operations suspected of financing terrorism indicates increased awareness on the part of operators such as banks and other players," the report said.
This increased awareness leads to attention to details such as clients who appear reluctant to provide information, or whose explanations for the transfers are not convincing, and generally any sudden change in client behavior or spending patterns, it added.
Also on Monday, Italian news agency ANSA reported UIF Director Claudio Clemente as saying 90 percent of the suspicious transactions detected by the unit were considered of investigative interest by the police, and in many cases the suspicions were confirmed.
The UIF was set up in 2017 in response to a European Union directive on combating money laundering.
