TERRORISM FINANCE: DEMARCHE DELIVERED ON FOUR

C O N F I D E N T I A L MADRID 000301 SIPDIS SIPDIS EEB/ESC/TFS (DBENDANA) E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/09/2018 TAGS: EFIN KTFN PTER ETTC PREL UNSC SY SP SUBJECT: TERRORISM FINANCE: DEMARCHE DELIVERED ON FOUR SYRIA-BASED MEMBERS OF ABU GHADIYAH NETWORK REF: SECSTATE 22757 Classified By: DCM Hugo Llorens for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (SBU) Econoff delivered reftel demarche March 10, notifying the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the recent E.O. 13224 designation of four Syria-based members of the Abu Ghadiyah network. Ivo Pascual, desk officer at the MFA's Directorate of Counter-Terrorism, accepted the additional information provided and indicated that he would pass it on to the relevant law enforcement agencies. ¶2. (SBU) In prior conversations, Pascual and his colleagues have noted that while 1267 designations are generally implemented immediately by Spain, all other designations must be vetted and accepted by the EU before Spain will take any steps to freeze assets or otherwise block financial transactions. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs takes every step to share U.S. domestic designations with Spain's law enforcement entities. ¶3. (C) Earlier, Econoff had confirmed in a separate meeting February 17 with Juan Carlos Calleja from SEPBLAC's anti-terrorist finance unit that SEPBLAC conducts cross checks on E.O. 13224 designations. SEPBLAC is Spain's financial intelligence unit. Calleja also told Econoff that SEPBLAC has not discovered any information indicating that any of the E.O 13224 designations passed to MFA in recent years have had any financial activities or links to Spain. AGUIRRE