MANAMA, 30 November 2004 — The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have been able to deny terrorists the use of their financial facilities and achieve positive ratings internationally in the fight against money laundering a top Bahraini financial security official said.
The head of the financial crime unit at the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID), Col. Adel Khalifa Al Fadel, said the GCC countries as a bloc had achieved favorable ratings by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for adhering to recommendation put forward by the international community to deny terrorists the ability to use financial institutions to finance terrorist activities.
“All of the GCC countries received high rating for adopting the 40 recommendations put forward by FATF,” he said. “We were evaluated as a bloc and all evaluations came back positive for adhering to these international standards.”
Fadel, who was speaking during “The Legal Framework for Combating Drugs and Money Laundering” seminar here, said that eight additional recommendations were made following the attacks of Sept. 11 to help tighten financial laws and to cut financing to terrorism.
“Bahrain had taken steps to tighten financial security and combat money laundering in 2001 before the September attacks to honor international agreements,” he said. “In 2002 the unit was established and since than we have investigated numerous cases that seemed suspicious.”
He added that most of the cases investigated turned out to be legitimate but he would not comment on ongoing cases currently being investigated by the public prosecutor.
“We receive a lot of reports from financial institutions concerning suspicious financial dealings, but in the majority of the cases the reports were dismissed,” he said.
“The cases that seemed illegal have been handed over to the public prosecutor and we cannot comment on them since the cases remain open.”
The head of the CID at the Ministry of Interior, Brig. Mohammed Ali Al Naumi, opened the three-day seminar which saw 100 participants from 20 countries and is being held in cooperation with the Naif Arab University for Security Sciences. He said the fight against drug trafficking and money laundering were increasingly becoming important because of their negative effects on the society.
“Bahrain like every other country has a problem with drugs,” he said. “The region is mainly used for trafficking of drugs and we are continuously cooperating with our GCC partners to combat this problem”.
Naumi added that there are regional agreements reached among the GCC countries to enhance cooperation and exchange of information to better deal with the issue of trafficking, indicating that the Ministry of Interior has adopted an awareness campaign to identify the dangers of drugs to the public.
“We are working closely with the Ministry of Education to include awareness programs into the curriculums,” he said. “The crimes linked to trafficking are on a grand scale and we are continuously following-up on them and exchanging information with other security partners because they crimes span the globe and knows no borders.”
The FATF is spearheading the efforts to adopt and implement measures designed to counter the use of the financial system by criminals. It has established a series of FATF Recommendations in 1990 that set out the basic framework for anti-money laundering efforts that are intended to be of universal application. The FATF issued new international standards to combat terrorist financing — an additional eight recommendations.
