BEIRUT, 28 September 2005 — Fourteen Arab states endorsed tough new standards yesterday to regulate informal money transfers, bulk cash couriers and charities as part of regional efforts to root out terrorism financing.
The members of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENA FATF) also agreed to launch landmark audits, or “mutual evaluations,” in 2006 to assess implementation of the standards and each state’s vulnerability to money laundering and abuse by terrorist financiers.
“We made a major breakthrough today,” MENA FATF chief Muhammad Baasiri said on the last day of a two-day meeting, which approved documents proposing greater transparency and supervision of informal “hawala” money transfers, bulk cash and charities — three methods used by militants to move money. “Agreement on the mutual evaluations was the most important thing,” he told Reuters. “
“Each country is expected to live up to the provisions of the papers. If a country does not live up to the provisions, this will be picked up in the mutual evaluation.”
In another development, Lebanese security forces raided the offices of a mobile phone operator in Beirut yesterday in connection with a UN probe into the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, security sources said.
The forces were accompanying investigators who copied data from the telephone records of MTC Touch and questioned three of its employees, the sources said on customary condition of anonymity. They did not elaborate.
Reuters pictures showed Lebanese security forces taking several people away from the building in a security bus. It was not immediately clear why they were taken away.
United Nations investigators were not involved in the raid but Detlev Mehlis, who is leading the international probe, was informed about the move and believed it would benefit his inquiries, a UN official in Beirut said.
