Arabs Seek Regional Group To Fight Money Laundering
|
|
Financial officials from Arab countries worked behind closed doors here on Thursday to create the first regional organization in the Middle East and North Africa to fight money laundering, delegates to a meeting on terrorist and criminal finance said. The organization could be a vital tool to pursue terrorist money that flows outside traditional banking channels through an ancient system known as hawala, which is also important in sending money from workers scattered around the globe to relatives in Muslim countries. Five regional organizations already work under the aegis of the Financial Action Task Force, which was created in 1989 to investigate money laundering by drug cartels and organized crime and, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has also tracked terrorist finance. The task force sets standards, like urging countries to adopt laws that make money laundering a crime and that authorize the extradition of suspects. It also publishes lists of countries whose financial regulatory systems it deems helpful to money laundering. The current list has 7 countries on it, down from a peak of 21. Creating the new organization has been the focus of talks here this week by delegates from the 31 countries and two organizations that make up the task force, said Patrick Moulette, the task force’s executive secretary. An announcement is expected Friday. The new organization could become part of task force operations as early as October, delegates said. Officials declined to say which nations were involved. Calls to the Washington and Paris embassies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt were not returned. Iran was not represented here, officials confirmed. The new regional organization could be crucial to identifying terrorist plots financed with money transferred across borders without any written record. In a hawala transaction, a client deposits funds with a hawala agent in one country and is given a code, usually a number. When the code is delivered to another hawala agent in another country, the money is turned over, minus a commission. More : query.nytimes.com |