The Financial Action Task Force: An Overview
The Financial Action Task Force:
An Overview
James K. Jackson
Specialist in International Trade and Finance
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Summary
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, or the 9/11
Commission, recommended that tracking terrorist financing “must remain front and
center in U.S. counterterrorism efforts.”1 As part of these efforts, the United States plays
a leading role in the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF). The
independent, intergovernmental policy-making body was established by the 1989 G-7
Summit in Paris as a result of growing concerns among the Summit participants about
the threat posed to the international banking system by money laundering. After
September 11, 2001, the body expanded its role to include identifying sources and
methods of terrorist financing and has adopted nine Special Recommendations on
terrorist financing to track terrorists’ funds. This report provides an overview of the
Task Force and of its progress to date in gaining broad international support for its
Recommendations. This report will be updated as warranted by events.
The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering is comprised of 31 member
countries and territories and two international organizations2 and was organized to
1 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, July, 2004. p. 382.
2 The FATF members are: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg,
Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, South
Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States; the two
international organizations are: the European Commission, and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The following organizations have observer status: Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering;
Caribbean Financial Action Task Force; Council of Europe Select Committee of Experts on the
Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures; Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money
Laundering Group; Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering in South America; other
international organizations including the African Development Bank; Asia Development Bank;
European Central Bank; International Monetary Fund; Organization of American States,
(continued...)
develop and promote policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.3
Recently, China and South Korea were granted observer status, the first step in the
process toward full membership in FATF. The FATF relies on a combination of annual
self-assessments and periodic mutual evaluations that are completed by a team of FATF
experts to provide information and to assess the compliance of its members to the FATF
guidelines. FATF has no enforcement capability, but can suspend member countries that
fail to comply on a timely basis with its guidelines. The FATF is housed at the
headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
in Paris and occasionally uses some OECD staff, but the FATF is not part of the OECD.
The Presidency of the FATF is a one-year appointed position, currently held by Mr. Frank
Swedlove of Canada, who will serve through June 30, 2007. The FATF has operated
under a five-year mandate. At the Ministerial meeting on May 14, 2004, the member
countries renewed the FATF’s mandate for an unprecedented eight years.
The Mandate
When it was established in 1989, the FATF was charged with examining money
laundering techniques and trends, reviewing the actions which had already been taken,
and setting out the measures that still needed to be taken to combat money laundering.
In 1990, the FATF issued a report containing a set of Forty Recommendations, which
provided a comprehensive plan of action to fight against money laundering. In 2003, the
FATF adopted the second revision to its original Forty Recommendations, which now
apply to money laundering and terrorist financing.4
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the FATF has redirected its efforts
to focus on terrorist financing. On October 31, 2001, the FATF issued a new set of
guidelines and a set of eight Special Recommendations on terrorist financing.5 At that
time, the FATF indicated that it had broadened its mission beyond money laundering to
focus on combating terrorist financing and that it was encouraging all countries to abide
by the new set of guidelines. A ninth Special Recommendation was added in 2005. In
Member States to implement the FATF Forty Recommendations on money laundering
and the Nine Special Recommendations on terrorist financing. The FATF nine Special
Recommendations are:
2 (...continued)
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime; and the World Bank.
3 To be admitted to the FATF, a country must: 1) be fully committed at the political level to
implement the Forty Recommendations within a reasonable time frame (three years) and to
undergo annual self-assessment exercises and two rounds of mutual evaluations; 2) be a full and
active member of the relevant FATF-style regional body; 3) be a strategically important country;
4) have already made the laundering of the proceeds of drug trafficking and other serious crimes
a criminal offense; and 5) have already made it mandatory for financial institutions to identify
their customers and to report unusual or suspicious transactions.
4 For the Forty Recommendations, see [http://www1.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/40Recs-2003_en.pdf].
5 FATF Cracks Down on Terrorist Financing. Washington, FATF, October 31, 2001, p. 1.
1. Ratify and implement the 1999 United Nations International Convention for the
Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and Security Council Resolution 1373
dealing with the prevention and suppression of the financing of terrorist acts;
3. Freeze and confiscate funds or other assets of terrorists and adopt measures which
allow authorities to seize and confiscate property;
4. Report funds that are believed to be linked or related to, or are to be used for
terrorism, terrorist acts, or by terrorist organizations;
5. Provide the widest possible range of assistance to other countries’ law enforcement
and regulatory authorities in connection with criminal, civil enforcement, and
administrative investigations;
7. Strengthen customer identification requirements on financial institutions for
domestic and international wire transfers of funds;
8. Ensure that entities such as non-profit organizations cannot be misused to finance
terrorism.
9. Implement a system for detecting physical cross-border transportation of currency
and monetary instruments (cash couriers), including authority to stop or restrain
currency or monetary instruments suspected of being related to money laundering or
terrorist financing; adopting sanctions for making false declarations; and confiscating
currency and monetary instruments that are related to money laundering or terrorist
financing.
The FATF completed a review of its mandate and proposed changes that were
adopted at the May 2004 Ministerial meeting. The new mandate provides for the
following five objectives: (1) continue to establish the international standards for
combating money laundering and terrorist financing; (2) support global action to combat
money laundering and terrorist financing, including stronger cooperation with the IMF
and the World Bank; (3) increase membership in the FATF; (4) enhance relationships
between FATF and regional bodies and non-member countries and; 5) intensify its study
of the techniques and trends in money laundering and terrorist financing.6
Progress to Date
An essential part of the FATF activities is assessing the progress of its members in
complying with the FATF recommendations. As previously indicated, the FATF has
attempted to accomplish this activity through assessments performed annually by the
individual members and through mutual evaluations. According to the 2005-2006
assessment provided by the FATF members, the only country considered to be a non-
cooperative country is Myanmar. The rest of the members are in full compliance or
partial compliance on seven of the eight Special Recommendations on terrorist financing.
6 [http://www1.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/PR-20040514_en.pdf]
Part of the difficulty the FATF faces in determining how fully member countries are
complying with the Special Recommendations is in reaching a mutual understanding of
what the Recommendations mean and how a country should judge its performance
relative to the Recommendations, since the Recommendations are periodically revised
and new methodologies for analyzing money laundering and terrorist financing are
adopted. In addition, a number of the Recommendations require changes in laws and
other procedures that take time for member countries to implement. To assist member
countries in complying with the FATF Recommendations, FATF has issued various
Interpretative Notes to clarify aspects of the Recommendations and to further refine the
obligations of member countries.
Between 2002 and 2003, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank
participated in a year-long pilot program to conduct assessments on money laundering and
terrorist financing in various countries7 using the methodology developed by the FATF.8
In March 2004, the IMF and World Bank agreed to make the program a permanent part
of their activities. Over the year, the IMF and the Bank conducted assessments in 41
jurisdictions. According to these assessments, the Fund/Bank reached a number of
conclusions regarding the overall compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and
the eight (at that time) Special Recommendations. In particular, they concluded that
overall compliance was uneven across jurisdictions, but that jurisdictions display a higher
level of compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations than they do with the eight
Special Recommendations due to shortcomings in domestic legislation. In general, the
Fund/Bank concluded that compliance is higher among high and middle income countries
than in low income countries. The most common weaknesses identified by the IMF and
the World Bank include:
!Poor coordination among government agencies, especially among
financial supervisors, financial investigators, the police, public
prosecutors, and the public.
!Ineffective law enforcement due to a lack of skills, training, or resources
to investigate, prosecute, and adjudicate money laundering cases among
police, prosecutors, or the courts.
!Weak supervision by financial supervisors due to understaffed or under-
trained supervisors who lacked the skills or capacity to monitor and
enforce compliance with money laundering or terrorist financing
requirements.
!Inadequate systems and controls among financial firms to identify and
report suspicious activity, or to ensure that adequate records were being
maintained.
7 This group of countries is not the same as those surveyed by the FATF, although there is some
overlap in coverage between the FATF and the IMF/World Bank assessments.
8 This section is based on the IMF/Bank report: Twelve-Month Pilot Program of Anti-Money
Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AmL/CFT) Assessments: Joint Report
on the Review of the Pilot Program. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
March 10, 2004.
!Shortcomings in international cooperation due to strong secrecy
provisions, restrictions placed on counterpart’s use of information and
the inability to share information unless a criminal investigation was
already underway or a formal agreement was in place.
For each of the Special Recommendations, the IMF and the World Bank offered
additional conclusions:
1. Ratification and implementation of U.N. instruments. Almost one-third of the
jurisdictions assessed by the IMF/World Bank failed to comply with this
recommendation.
2. Criminalizing the financing of terrorism and associated money laundering. This
Recommendation was one of the least observed by the jurisdictions reviewed.
3. Freezing and confiscating terrorist assets. About one third of the jurisdictions that
were assessed displayed serious deficiencies complying with this Recommendation,
generally because there was a lack of explicit legal provisions or other arrangements that
would require the freezing of funds or assets of terrorists.
4. Reporting suspicious transactions related to terrorism. Forty percent of the assessed
jurisdictions displayed a lack of legal and institutional measures that would require
making a report to competent authorities when there is a suspicion that funds are linked
to terrorist financing.
5. International cooperation. This recommendation, which covers mutual assistance and
extradition in financing of terrorism-related cases, is one of the least observed
recommendations, where almost half of the relevant countries exhibited significant
deficiencies.
6. Alternative remittance systems. In most jurisdictions, such remittances were judged
to be irrelevant, but of those jurisdictions that were considered, one-half were found to
be deficient.
7. Wire transfers. Compliance was assessed inconsistently because there was ambiguity
about whether the standard was in force. Those jurisdictions that were not in compliance
generally lacked formal requirements that complete information be included in each
transaction.
In February 2004, the FATF adopted a revised version of the 40 Recommendations
that significantly broadens the scope and detail of the Recommendations over previous
versions. Also, the FATF adopted a new methodology to track and identify money
laundering and terrorist financing that applies to both the 40 Recommendations and the
eight (nine) Special Recommendations. As a result of the significant length and
additional detail of these new requirements, the FATF decided that it will no longer
conduct self-assessment exercises based on the previous method, but will initiate follow-
up reports to mutual evaluations.
In 2005, the FATF issued revised standards related to wire transfers of funds. The
new standards require financial institutions to include the name, address, and account
number of the originator on all fund transfers. The standards also lower the reporting
threshold from $3,000 to $1,000. Two FATF-style regional bodies were also created —
the Eurasian Group and the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force.
The first round of mutual evaluations for these two bodies was scheduled for 2006. In
2007, the FATF adopted new measures to protect the international financial system from
abuse, including calling on Iran to strengthen its money-laundering and counter-terrorist
financing controls and a new commitment to produce a regular global threat assessment
detailing key issues of concern related to criminal and terrorist financing.
Issues for Congress
Following the 9-11 attacks, Congress passed P.L. 107-56 (the USA Patriot Act) to
expand the ability of the Treasury Department to detect, track and prosecute those
involved in money laundering and terrorist financing. In 2004, the 108th Congress
adopted P.L. 108-458, which appropriated funds to combat financial crimes, made
technical corrections to P.L. 107-56, and required the Treasury Department to report on
the current state of U.S. efforts to curtail the international financing of terrorism. The
experience of the Financial Action Task Force in tracking terrorist financing, however,
indicates that there are significant national hurdles that remain to be overcome before
there is a seamless flow of information shared among nations. While progress has been
made, domestic legal issues and established business practices, especially those that
govern the sharing of financial information across national borders, continue to hamper
efforts to track certain types of financial flows across national borders. Continued
progress likely will depend on the success of member countries in changing their domestic
laws to allow for greater sharing of financial information, criminalizing certain types of
activities, and improving efforts to identify and track terrorist-related financial accounts.
The economic implications of money laundering and terrorist financing pose another
set of issues that argue for gaining greater control over this type of activity. According
to the IMF, money laundering accounts for between $600 billion and $1.6 trillion in
economic activity annually. Money launderers exploit differences among national anti-
money laundering systems and move funds into jurisdictions with weak or ineffective
laws. In such cases, organized crime can become more entrenched and create a full range
of macroeconomic consequences, including unpredictable changes in money demand,
risk to the soundness of financial institutions and the financial system, contamination
effects on legal financial transactions and increased volatility of capital flows and
exchange rates due to unprecedented cross-border transfers.9
9 The IMF and the Fight Against Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism. IMF
Factsheet, April 2003. [http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/aml.htm]