Countries target terror financing
PARIS – Middle Eastern and north African states have agreed to set up a regional body to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, a senior Bahraini official said Friday.
Sheikh Ibrahim bin Khalifa al-Khalifa, an undersecretary at Bahrain’s Finance Ministry, said the new body would be based in Bahrain and launched at an inaugural ministerial meeting in November.
Al-Khalifa spoke in Paris, where officials from Arab states held talks on the margins of a meeting of the international Financial Action Task Force on money laundering and terrorism financing.
The planned new organization, referred to as the Middle East-North Africa FATF, will be a “regional subdivision” of the global watchdog, al-Khalifa said.
It will promote the same standards and best practices for tackling criminal and terrorism financing, he added.
Al-Khalifa said the new organization has received political backing from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have signaled their support without making a final commitment.
“All of them have expressed readiness to fund and support this body,” he said.
A new executive secretary will be appointed at the November meeting to head the regional watchdog, Al-Khalifa added, while its presidency and vice-presidency will rotate annually among the member countries.
The announcement came as the Paris-based FATF urged Saudi Arabia to tighten up laws and controls on financial transfers and speed up cooperation with international investigations.
In a report published Friday at the end of a three-day meeting, the global watchdog said Saudi Arabia already complies with “almost” all of the guidelines but called for improvements in key areas.
Patrick Moulette, secretary-general of the Paris-based FATF, praised new Saudi anti-terror and money laundering laws enacted last year but said tougher measures were needed.
The 33-member FATF also said a requirement for all investigations into suspect transfers to pass through the central Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency was likely to slow down probes both by foreign and Saudi law enforcement agencies.
The kingdom “should review and amend its legislation” to provide speedier access to financial data in terror probes, the FATF said.
The FATF also announced Friday that Guatemala had been removed from the blacklist of countries or territories that don’t cooperate enough with international anti-money laundering efforts.