FATF to criminalise financing 'terror travels'

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Wednesday has urged all member states to criminalise financing of terror-related travels.

In the guidelines issued, the task force has instructed member states to "criminalise the financing of travel for the purpose of the perpetration, planning, preparation of or participation in, terrorist acts, or providing or receiving terrorist training," as quoted by Dawn.

The Paris based monitoring agency also instructed the member states to identify and take measures to tackle the problem of strategic deficiencies for terrorist financing.

"Global safeguards to combat terrorist financing are only as strong as the jurisdiction with the weakest measures," the statement read.

It reminded member states that a key objective of the FATF is to continually identify jurisdictions with significant weaknesses in their AML/CFT regimes, and to work with them to address those weaknesses.

FATF reminded member states that terrorists and terrorist groups continued to raise money with use of various means, and therefore, "countries must make it a priority to understand the risks they face from terrorist financing and develop policy responses to all aspects of it".

FATF also asked all jurisdictions to work closely with the regional body of the organization and other key partners like the United Nation.

While underlining the changing nature of the threat of terrorism, FATF also urged the member to update the understanding of terrorist financing risks that vary the world over.

"The understanding of risk is a key part of jurisdictions' counter-terrorist financing regime, as understanding the risks allows countries to allocate resources to detect or disrupt terrorist financing," it added.

In the last meet, the agency cautioned Pakistan who is on the grey list, saying that if significant progress not be made across the full range of its action plan by next Plenary, the FATF could call on its members to advise their financial institutions to give special attention to business relations/transactions with Islamabad.