The chairman of Finsbury Park mosque has demanded to be removed from a confidential terrorism blacklist used by UK high street banks, warning that it “alienated and demonised” members of the mainstream Muslim community.
Mohammed Kozbar said he was “shocked and astonished” to find the north London mosque described as a terrorism risk on a confidential database used by 49 out of the world’s biggest 50 banks.
He made the discovery following a BBC Radio 4 documentary due to be aired on Tuesday night by the journalist Peter Oborne into why HSBC cancelled the accounts of several prominent Islamic bodies without explanation last year.
The documentary concluded that Finsbury Park mosque, along with the Cordoba Foundation thinktank, have been classified under “terrorism” on World-Check, a risk-analysis database owned by the financial information giant Thomson Reuters.
The mosque was once linked to the radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza in the late 1990s, but has for the last decade sought to purge its extremist past and integrate with the wider community.
Kozbar, who has worked to transform the mosque, said he was dismayed to learn the body had been deemed a terrorism risk and been given no right of reply.
He said the classification undermined David Cameron’s call earlier this month for the Muslim community to integrate more with wider British society because the mosque had been unfairly blacklisted by high street banks, forcing it to go instead to an Islamic bank.
“The prime minister is talking about integration and Muslims engaging more in wider society – this is exactly what we are trying to do, and look what’s happened. We’ve found that we’ve been forced to deal with the Islamic bank only,” Kozbar said.
“We are a part of wider society and we want to deal with other mainstream banks and high street banks but our accounts have been closed unfortunately. Unless we do something about it, the Muslim community will always feel they are alienated and demonised.”
The mosque was described by Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn, the Islington North MP, as a “wonderful community asset” in July last year, after it received a letter from HSBC saying that its account was being closed down.
Kozbar, a vice-president of the Muslim Association of Britain, said the mosque’s solicitors would write to Thomson Reuters and demand to be removed from World-Check’s terrorism risk list.
The BBC Radio 4 documentary, titled HSBC, Muslims and Me, which is due to air at 8pm on Tuesday, also discovered that HSBC closed the accounts of the Cordoba Foundation, its chief executive, his wife and their two children last year.
Anas Altikriti, the foundation’s chief executive, is one of the most prominent supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. Like the Finsbury Park mosque, the Cordoba Foundation was classed as “terrorism” on World-Check – although in its case the claim was sourced to the United Arab Emirates, according to the BBC. The UAE government brands what it considers political opponents like the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists.
Altikriti denied that the Cordoba Foundation was associated with terrorism. He said it was worrying that a regime such as the UAE could influence the perception of political opponents in the western world. “When such an organisation can actually be called or associated with terrorism – such a violent, serious accusation by a corrupt, authoritarian, non-democratic, human right-abusing regime – and that’s taken seriously, [then] that’s a huge huge problem,” he said.
A HSBC spokesman said the bank gathered information from a wide range of services when it reviewed its customer accounts.
He added: “For a business customer these factors may include the type of activities the business is involved in, the jurisdictions in which it operates and the banking products and services it uses. Although we can’t always provide customers with specific reasons for closing an account, any such decisions are not taken lightly and are not based on a customer’s race or religion.
“We are committed to working with the UK government and industry bodies to support the not-for-profit sector and to help charity customers manage risk in their operations.”
A Thomson Reuters spokesman said he could not comment on individual entries on World-Check due to the UK Data Protection Act.
He added: “World-Check was established in the UK specifically due to the clear legal context provided for its activities by the UK Data Protection Act and European Union data use regulations. This is not the case with some competing providers.
“Many of our customers will consult several sources to meet their regulatory ‘know your customer’ obligations in making KYC decisions. The World-Check research methodology uses specialist research teams led by subject matter experts with deep domain knowledge focused on topics such as sanctions, terrorism and insurgency, organised crime and Middle East security.
“World Check aggregates financial crime data, including sanctions data from government and law enforcement authorities, to help financial institutions satisfy anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations. It also provides secondary identifying information on individuals, such as dates and place of birth, and this will be similarly verified with reputable and official sources.”