Jack Ryan, Season One (2018)
Transaction Analysis Reveals Suspicious Activity of International Wire Transfers Funding a Terrorist Attack
Jack Ryan, the Amazon four-season streaming series that refreshed and repositioned the main character,Dr. Jack Ryan (John Krasinski), as a former battlefield tested marine in Afghanistan turned cubicle-riding Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) threat intelligence analyst in the Terrorist, Finance, and Arms Division (T-FAD). Season One, Episode One, begins with Dr. Ryan at CIA headquarters following the financial trail of someone known as Suleiman.
In a CIA intelligence briefing with the T-FAD team’s new boss, a demoted group chief, James Greer (Wendell Pierce), Dr. Ryan explains that he’s been monitoring SWIFT transactions around Aden, Yemen and has red flagged several transactions as potentially suspicious. SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions, is an international messaging network used by financial institutions to wire transfer funds globally. SWIFT relies on a series of message types (MT), which are specific text fields to send a wire transfer from the originator to a beneficiary, inclusive of businesses or individuals. Certain MT fields are mandatory to send the funds, whereas some fields are optional.
Dr. Ryan believes its anomalous to see large one-off transactions to individuals in Yemen, especially with SWIFT, which occur in patterns more typical of frequent business transactions. He further elaborates that he is concerned these transactions are indicative of a high-level target, which he believes to be a man named Suleiman or ‘man of peace.’ Dr. Ryan senses the way people in the region are talking about Suleiman is a cause of concern and that he’s developed a SQL query to run data across two databases, which are not designed to talk to each other, providing him insight into the transactions. Greer remains skeptical of Dr. Ryan’s theory and shuts him down.
At the 17-minute mark, Dr. Ryan follows up with Greer to share the actual details of the red flagged transactions, including transactions executed through a mobile phone-app, which Greer remembers from his time in Karachi, Pakistan. All the transactions are linked to a single account in the name of a Saudi import-export company, which was opened a week and half ago at a bank in Aden. Dr. Ryan independently pulled the business license of the company, which revealed it is less than a month old, leading him to conclude the import-export company is a shell company. A shell company is an incorporated company, like a limited liability company, that lacks significant assets, ongoing business activities, or employees, which can be designed with an ownership that obfuscates the ultimate beneficial owner(s) or controlling person(s). Traditionally, newly formed companies with large transactions are generally considered red flags for suspicious activity.
Dr. Ryan further explains the company executed six SWIFT transactions within eight days totaling more than $9 million dollars, which is inconsistent with the other accounts Dr. Ryan had been monitoring as the largest two transactions barely exceeded $100,000. Dr. Ryan asks Greer to order a demarche, a method for the US to request another government to assist with a legal action in their home country, to freeze the funds on the import-export account. He raises concerns that Suleiman might be ready to execute another 9/11-type event funded with 20x the money it cost Osama Bin Laden to execute the 9/11 attacks. Greer remains unconvinced Dr. Ryan has enough information on the purpose of Suleiman’s funds and denies the request. However, Dr. Ryan finds a way to have the accounts frozen.
Subsequently, in a blend of actionable boots-on-the-ground intelligence meets financial intelligence, two believed-to-be couriers, one a businessman, the other, Soufan, a bodyguard, are picked up in Yemen following a meeting outside a bank by the US Special Activities Division (SAD) and the Yemeni Political Security Organization (PSO). Shortly thereafter, Dr. Ryan’s role is escalated from desk jockey analyst in Washington DC to necessary participant on the ground at a CIA black site in Yemen. Essentially, Dr. Ryan’s intimate knowledge of the financial transactions is sought to help the SAD interrogators with the appropriate questions to ask the couriers seeking information on Suleiman.
At the black site, Dr. Ryan continues to play coy as just an analyst and monitors the courier interrogations. He picks up on that one of the couriers had a mobile phone, intuitively, Dr. Ryan calls the number, and the mobile phone of the businessman rings, which directly links the couriers to the transactions he’s been monitoring. Subsequently, Dr. Ryan engages in a one-on-one interrogation with Soufan, however, based on several visible clues he determines the bodyguard is Suleiman. Concurrently, the site is attacked by a heavily armed local Saudi Arabian militant group seeking to rescue Suleiman, where Dr. Ryan, the ex-marine side, engages in a physical battle with Suleiman. In the end, Suleiman and the militants escape leaving several US soldiers dead, Dr. Ryan confirms the identity of Suleiman, however, he does not obtain any information on what Suleiman is planning.
Subsequently, at a CIA briefing back in Washington DC on the attack, CIA Deputy Director of Operations, Nathan Singer (Timothy Hutton), suggests Suleiman is from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria aka ISIS in response to a question from the CIA Director of National Intelligence, Bobby Vig (Ron Canada). However, analyst-Dr. Ryan proposes otherwise, which puts Dr. Ryan square in the middle of the briefing to support his dissenting theory. Vig asks why Dr. Ryan knows so much about Suleiman, yet the senior team is only hearing about him for the first time, to which Dr. Ryan states ‘by following the money.’
Dr. Ryan suggests Suleiman does not fit the typical funding profile of ISIS, which uses traditional analog methods such as Hawalas to move funds obtained from smuggling or ceased oil reserves in Iraq and Syria. Hawalas are informal value transfer methods to remit funds, oftentimes, funds are moved in a series of codes through a ledger system to manage the settlement process. Rather, the frozen account was from a European bank that was funded by multiple wire transfers from various fake LLCs with the money ‘washed’ so many times it would be impossible to understand the source of funds.
Unlike ISIS, Dr. Ryan and Greer proffer that Suleiman’s operation is way more sophisticated based on the financial transaction profile and how they coordinated the black site attack. Unfortunately for Dr. Ryan, in a bit of turf war above him between Greer and Singer, the primary intelligence lead is assigned to the European team. However, Greer has Suleiman’s mobile phone that was dropped during the black site attack, but they do not know the passcode to unlock it. From there, the remaining episodes of Season One focus on identifying, locating, and thwarting Suleiman’s terror plot through human and financial intelligence.
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