MANAMA, 2 December 2004 — Fourteen Arab countries have teamed up to coordinate their fight against money laundering and terror financing in the region.
The inaugural meeting of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force on Tuesday pledged to set up systems to fight the flow of dirty cash and work together to raise member states’ compliance with international standards.
“This is a historic day for the region as it shows the world that we are serious about fighting the twin evils of money laundering and terrorist financing,” said Bahrain’s Finance and National Economy Minister Abdullah Saif.
The group committed itself to implement some 50 recommendations of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which has set the global standards in combating the use by Al-Qaeda, its affiliates and other terror organizations of the global financial system.
Saudi Arabia, fellow GCC members Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait signed up to the regional task force along with Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
Libya, Sudan and the Palestinian Authority did not attend and Iraq sent an observer.
“One of the objectives is to raise compliance in line with international standards, and to provide technical assistance to countries,” said the regional task force’s first president, Muhammad Baasiri of Lebanon.
“Some of the countries are not as advanced as the others — there will be a need to stand by each other and to keep in touch,” he said.
FATF President Jean-Louis Fort said the new body could help countries of the region work together to stop charity money being diverted to militant groups.
The Bahraini minister said his country was confident that charities and the hawala system of cash transfer — identified as another area of concern by Western officials — were not linked to terror financing in his country.
“It is part of our culture that (money) goes to charitable institutions and they disperse grants to needy people. They are not used to finance terror,” Saif said.
“And in hawala the amounts are minimal ... I’m 100 percent sure they are not the cause of the financing of terrorism. They are small amounts and they are needed by the poor (to send remittances home),” he said.
