Gains from porno sites used to finance extremist and terrorist organizations

Gains from porno sites are used to finance extremist and terrorist organizations, Head of Cyber Crime Department at the Moscow Interior Department, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Chepchugov said on Wednesday at a briefing in Moscow.

According to him, up to 75% of child pornography is circulated through the Internet. About 90% of the INTERPOL investigation orders on cyber crime address this problem, Chepchugov noted.

He stated that porno dealers' gains constitute a weighty segment of the shadow financial market and are used to finance both general crime and terrorist organizations. Based on available information, Chepchugov said that, on average, each Internet child porno site yields an illegal monthly profit of about $30,000.

Every day the Cyber Crime Department at the Moscow Interior Department searches for such sites in the web. All in all 3,000 sites, which are of interest to the police, have been examined since March 2002. The examination resulted in initiating 14 criminal cases.

Chepchugov added that the Department is working effectively to track down extremist sites.