BY SUMIT KUMAR SINGH
New Delhi, March 24 (SocialNews.XYZ) Amid Coronavirus threat, a five-day meet of global dirty money monitoring bodies -- Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Eurasian Group (EAG) and Asia Pacific Group (APG) - at India's national capital from April 6, is postponed.
The FATF, EAG and APG experts meeting was organized in New Delhi to discuss emerging challenges in way to combat terror finances and money laundering and before law enforcement agencies.
It was scheduled from April 6 to April 10 in New Delhi.
FATF stated that the scheduled expert meeting has been "postponed". It issued a statement, "Due to the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) emergency, the FATF and FATF-style regional bodies (FSRBs) are implementing precautionary measures that impact scheduled events, such as postponing, cancelling, or holding them virtually."
The experts were to discuss ways to develop and conduct joint activities aimed at combating money laundering and terrorist financing; technical assistance programme with specialized international organizations, bodies, and interested states and analyzing money laundering and terrorist financing trends (typologies).
The experts were also to discuss ways to exchange best practices of combating financial crimes taking into account regional specifics.
During the meet, Indian law enforcement agencies dealing with financial and terror crimes were to strongly take up how Pakistan continues nefarious activities to fund terrorism and spreading terror in other South Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and others.
Earlier, India had approached FATF to put Pakistan on blacklist. However, Pakistan has been on the 'grey list' since June 2018 and it is trying to wriggle out of it.
India's concern is that Pakistan has not been put on the 'black list' of the terror finance watch body despite Islamabad not taking any significant action to check either terror financing or money laundering.
The FATF is a Paris-based inter-governmental body created in 1989 to check money laundering. The FATF currently comprises 37 member jurisdictions and 2 regional organisations, representing most major financial centres in all parts of the globe. Its mandate focuses only on the fight against laundering of proceeds of crimes and the financing of terrorism.
The Asia/Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering is an inter-governmental organisation, consisting of 41 member jurisdictions, focused on ensuring that its members effectively implement the international standards against money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing related to weapons of mass destruction.
And the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and financing of terrorism is an FATF-style regional body. The EAG was established in 2004 and is currently an associate member of the FATF. The initiative to establish the EAG was first announced by the Russian Federation at the Plenary Meeting of the FATF in October 2003.
(Sumit Kumar Singh can be reached at sumit.k@ians.in)
Source: IANS
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