Brussels, 05/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - During its extraordinary meeting last week in Washington, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) adopted recommendations and an action plan to combat terrorist financing. "Today the FATF has issued new international standards to combat terrorist financing, which we call on all countries in the world to adopt and implement", said FATF President Claire Lo.
The 29 states that make up the FATF (an independent body under the OECD umbrella) undertook to subscribe to the group's recommendations to: 1) take immediate steps to ratify and implement the relevant United Nations instruments; 2) criminalise the financing of terrorism, terrorist acts and terrorist organisations; 3) freeze and confiscate terrorist assets; 4) report suspicious transactions linked to terrorism; 5) provide the widest possible range of assistance to other countries' law enforcement and regulatory authorities for terrorist financing investigations; 6) impose anti-money laundering requirements on alternative remittance systems; 7) strengthen customer identification measures in international and domestic wire transfers; and 8) ensure that entities, in particular non-profit organisations, cannot be misused to finance terrorism.
The FATF sets out an action plan providing: 1) By 31 December 2001: self-assessment by all FATF members against the Special Recommendations. This will include a commitment to come into compliance with the Special Recommendations by June 2002 and action plans addressing the implementation of Recommendations not already in place; 2) By February 2002, the development of additional guidance for financial institutions on the techniques and mechanisms used in the financing of terrorism; 3) In June 2002, the initiation of a process to identify jurisdictions that lack appropriate measures to combat terrorist financing and discussion of next steps, including the possibility of counter-measures for jurisdictions that do not counter terrorist financing; 3) Regular publication by its members of the amount of suspected terrorist assets frozen, in accordance with the appropriate United Nations Security Council Resolutions; 4) The provision by FATF members of technical assistance to non-members, as necessary, to assist them in complying with the Special Recommendations. (The full text of the Recommendations is available on the OECD website: http://www.oecd.org ).