The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has apprised about 400 experts from both the public and private sectors of the latest risk findings related to money laundering and terror funding.
During its annual joint experts’ meet, attended by participants from various government agencies all over the world and international bodies such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Interpol, the FATF also informed them about solutions and its ongoing projects. “The FATF attaches great importance to effective information sharing, which is one of the cornerstones of a well-functioning AML/CFT [Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism] framework,” said the FATF in a statement.
Ensuring that countries had strong tools to fight money laundering, terrorist financing or the financing of proliferation required an in-depth understanding of the evolving risks and the latest detection, investigation and prosecution techniques, it said.
During the four-day meeting, the experts deliberated on, and proposed, various priority projects.
They also exchanged ideas on issues such as financing of ethnically or radically motivated terrorism, their transnational links, environmental crime, illegal arms trafficking and terror financing, and digital transformation.
Terror funding
“Experts shared their experience and findings from money laundering cases linked to illegal logging and land clearance, mining related crimes and waste trafficking. Participants noted the important role of export companies, refiners, logistics and other non-traditional sectors in detecting anomalies and illicit financial flows from these crimes,” said the FATF.
The experts presented the international legal framework on preventing access of terrorists to arms and provisions covering illegal arms trafficking.
“Participants also focused on the linkages between illicit arms trafficking and terrorist financing and the need for national risk assessments to address these risks,” it said.
Experiences of using advanced analytics, such as text mining, privacy preserving technology, online analytical processing and social network analysis in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, were also shared, according to the FATF.