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UK welcomes new standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing
The Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard-setter in the fight
against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, has today
agreed a new set of standards aimed at combating the global threat
of money laundering, terrorist financing and the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. The UK supports these new standards
and the need for FATF and its member countries to promote their implementation.
The FATF Recommendations have been revised to provide governments
with stronger tools to take action against financial crime and
protect the integrity of the global financial system. Today’s
recommendations have been strengthened, specifically in areas
which are high risk or where implementation could be enhanced,
including dealing with new threats such as the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, improving transparency and being
tougher on corruption.
The revision of the Recommendations will also provide more
flexibility to simplify measures that are applied to financial
services or transactions that pose a low risk for abuse. This
risk-based approach will allow financial institutions and other
designated sectors to focus resources more effectively on higher
risk areas.
Countries’ technical compliance to these
recommendations is monitored, assessed and reviewed by FATF
members through a peer review, or “mutual evaluation”, process.
FATF will begin a new round of evaluations on the Recommendations
of its member countries in 2013 and will focus much more
intensively on assessing how effectively countries have
implemented the Standards.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Sassoon said:
“The UK welcomes the revised FATF standards. The integrity of
the global financial system will now be better protected through
strengthened measures to combat the global threat of money
laundering, terrorist financing and of the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. We are fully committed to
implementing these new global standards and will work with
international partners in FATF to encourage full and consistent
adoption by all countries.”
Notes for Editors
1. The FATF’s standards are applied by over
180 countries through a global network of money laundering and
counter terrorist regional bodies, as well as the IMF and the
World Bank.
2. Over the last two years, a review of the
standards has been carried out to ensure that they continue to be
relevant and effectively target emerging risks. The outcome of
this two year process has been the production of the 40 revised
Recommendations released today and are available on the FATF
website: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/document/50/0,3746,en_32250379_32236920_49653426_1_1_1_1,00.html
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