A WhatsApp group chat was used to send millions in cash around the world, funding crime and extremism

The EBU reported that it had uncovered additional gangs across Europe employing the hawala method to enable criminal conduct. A former money launderer, identified only as Frank, told the EBU that he had participated in transactions amounting to respective 100 cardinal euros. Frank said his first exposure to hawala occurred at an office in a small municipality outside Rotterdam. He recalled that five or six messengers arrived with cash within about an hour and a half, moving at least a cardinal euros, which he estimated. "What I found out later is that it’s not just about money. It’s about the financing of terror. It’s about drug trafficking. It’s about prostitution and all sorts of other rubbish, to put it nicely," he stated. Investigations in Austria have also shown how the hawala system is linked to migrant smuggling and violence. In one case examined by the Austrian broadcaster ORF, part of the EBU network, Austrian police raided what they described as "the biggest hawala office in Vienna." The operation was based in a kebab shop on a busy street, which authorities said was used to process payments for migrant smuggling. Two Syrian brothers who managed the premises were charged with human trafficking, as well as torturing and raping a courier who had lost €350,000 (£300,000), claiming he had been robbed. They were convicted the previous year and received sentences of 18 and eight years in prison, respectively. Austrian police and Europol subsequently dismantled another migrant‑smuggling ring financed through hawala, officials said, which had moved roughly 100,000 people into Europe over an 18‑month period. Gerald Tatzgern, head of human‑trafficking investigations at Austria’s Criminal Intelligence Service (BK), told ORF that torture is a reality of migrant smuggling and is also used to increase profits. He said: "Videos of the torture are then sent to the families, saying that if they don’t send another €1,000 or several thousand euros, then the individual — your son, your brother, your father — will suffer."