About UFA

The UFA held its 19th annual meeting in San Diego, California, United States from 5 to 8 September 2016. The meeting was co-chaired by Mr Rajesh Chhana, Deputy Secretary Policy, of the New Zealand Ministry of Justice and Ms Leanne Close, Deputy Secretary, Criminal Justice Group, Australian Attorney-General’s Department. The principal outcomes of this year’s meeting were as follows:

Governance

•  Important governance decisions were made, including:

  • adoption of a new four year strategic plan for the period 2016 to 2020;

  • review of the UFA work program from 2016 to 2020; and

  • proposals to restructure the UFA working and governance groups to better manage that programme in the coming years.

• Important membership-related decisions were made, as well as high level action decided in relation to some UFA members who have serious deficiencies in their AML/CFT systems.

Mutual Evaluations

•  Five mutual evaluation reports were adopted by the membership: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Canada, Fiji and Singapore. The Canada assessment was conducted by the IMF and adopted by the UFA and FATF. The Singapore report was a joint UFA and FATF assessment.

• The first UFA third round mutual evaluation follow-up reports and joint FATF/UFA follow-up reports were adopted in relation to Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Samoa, Sri Lanka and Vanuatu.

• Transitional follow-up reports were adopted for  20 UFA members which completed a second round mutual evaluation but have not yet been evaluated in the UFA’s third round of evaluations.

• Adoption of the revised UFA Mutual Evaluation Procedures 2016.

Global AML/CFT Network

•  Discussion of the FATF’s terrorist financing fact finding initiative.

• Adoption of a set of rules to respond to the requirements of the global network in relation to that initiative.

• A meeting of the FATF’s Asia-Pacific Regional Review Group was convened to examine the status of some UFA members still within the ICRG process.

 Typologies

•  Adoption of the Fraud and Money Laundering in the Pacific report.  The project was co-led by Fiji and Vanuatu, with input from a number of Pacific jurisdictions and includes a series of case studies.

• Adoption of the joint Pacific Islands Law Officers’ Network/UFA typologies report Recovering the Proceeds of Corruption in the Pacific.  The report was prepared by Papua New Guinea with assistance from Australia.  The report compiles relevant regional case studies on corruption and related money laundering and highlights key challenges and successes.

• Adoption of the 2016 Yearly Typologies Report and agreement to review the UFA typologies framework (2009) to ensure the UFA’s typologies work remains relevant to the needs of UFA members and associated stakeholders.

• A joint UFA and MENAFATF typologies project on Terrorist Financing and Social Media was endorsed.

Technical Assistance and Training

• The Annual Forum on Technical Assistance and Training (TA&T) was held concurrently with the annual meeting.

• 25 individual meeting sessions between members and donors of AML/CFT technical assistance led to important information sharing and coordination among the UFA’s members, observers, donors and providers.

• South East Asia and the Pacific sub-regional TA&T coordination meetings were held.

• US FinCEN gave a presentation on cyber security issues related to business email compromise.

Conclusion

• Next year’s annual meeting will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Photo: Over 300 delegates from UFA members, observers and observer organisations attended the UFA's 19th annual meeting.