COLUMBUS — The state will investigate whether four businesses that Somalis say they use to send money home need licenses to operate.

        The four include a business the federal government shut down because of suspected terrorist ties.

        “If they are in fact transmitting money from Ohio to a foreign country, they need a license,” Bill Teets, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Commerce, said Friday.

        Federal agents Wednesday raided one of the four central Ohio businesses, Barakaat Enterprises in Columbus, and eight similar businesses in Boston, Minneapolis and Seattle. The Bush administration says the businesses, called hawalas by Somalis, are connected to the Al-Barakaat financial network, which is accused of funding Osama bin Laden's terrorist operation through fees on its money-transfer services.

        Hassan H. Hussein, owner of Barakaat Enterprises, has denied wrongdoing, and no charges have been filed against him.

        The U.S. Treasury Department is investigating other hawalas throughout the nation for possible links to terrorist activities, Tafia Scolinos, a department spokeswoman, said Friday.

        Under legislation Congress has approved to cut off terrorists' financial networks, beginning next year hawala brokers in the United States will have to register with the Treasury Department and report suspicious transactions to the government.

        The Ohio law requiring money-transfer businesses to be licensed is designed to protect consumers and not to track possible money laundering.

        “It's to ensure that if person A is trying to get $5,000 to person B, it's to make sure that the business is capable of getting the money from person A to person B,” Mr. Teets said.

        Somali immigrants say they rely on hawalas, financial systems based on trust, to send money to starving relatives in their war-torn homeland. T

        “There is no Western Union in Somalia, no bank, no government, no financial institutions,” said Maryan Warsame, executive director of the Somali Women's Association in Columbus. “You wake up in the morning and you don't have any money to buy anything. How do you survive?”

        Nasro Iman, director of the Somali Community Center in Columbus, said that besides Barakaat Enterprises, four other hawalas operate in the city.

        The state typically finds out about unlicensed businesses from disgruntled employees or competing businesses. Mr. Teets said the state had not received complaints about the four businesses. However, officials decided to investigate them because of information they received that the businesses are transferring money from Ohio to foreign countries, he said. He would not elaborate.

        The state confirmed that Barakaat Enterprises is one of the four it will investigate, but said it had not yet been able to verify the spellings or locations of the others.

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