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20th Annual Meeting, Colombo, Sri Lanka

2 August 2017

KEY OUTCOMES OF 20TH ANNUAL MEETING

The UFA held its 20th annual meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 17 to 21 July 2017. The meeting was chaired by the UFA co-chairs, Dr H Amarathunga, Director of the Sri Lanka Financial Intelligence Unit and Deputy Commissioner Leanne Close of the Australian Federal Police.  The principal outcomes of this year’s annual meeting were as follows:

Governance

Important governance decisions were made, including:

  1. restructuring UFA working and governance groups to better manage our business programmes in the coming years.

  2. membership-related decisions as well as high level action in relation to some UFA members who continue to have serious deficiencies in their AML/CFT systems.

Mutual Evaluation Programme

Five mutual evaluation reports were adopted for the following UFA members:

  1. Cambodia;

  2. Macao, China;

  3. Mongolia;

  4. Thailand;

  5. United States (joint with FATF).

The US report has been published via the FATF and UFA websites. The other reports will be published on this website in late August 2017.

The UFA also adopted third round mutual evaluation follow-up reports of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Fiji, Samoa, Sri Lanka and Vanuatu, and FATF follow-up reports of Australia and Malaysia (joint UFA/FATF members). Afghanistan, Brunei Darussalam, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Chinese Taipei and Vietnam exited transitional mutual evaluation follow-up in recognition of their significant progress in implementing the FATF standards.

Global AML/CFT Network

The membership discussed the FATF’s terrorist financing fact finding initiative and considered new procedures to manage referrals from the FATF’s ICRG relating to UFA members coming out of ICRG monitoring with residual issues of concern for the FATF.

Typologies

Also adopted were the following reports and new initiatives:

  1. joint UFA/UNODC report Enhancing the Detection, Investigation and Disruption of Illicit Financial Flows from Wildlife Crime. The report highlights the scale of wildlife crime and related money laundering, both regionally and globally, and provides a range of case studies, key findings, recommendations and good practices that will assist jurisdictions to combat wildlife crime by following related money flows.

  2. 2017 UFA Yearly Typologies Report which includes approximately 120 cases received from 29 jurisdictions and international organisations as well as links to the typologies reports of some UFA members and new typologies studies completed by partner organisations.

  3. new project entitled Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Risks Arising from Trafficking in and Smuggling of Human Beings. Phase 1 of this project will be conducted jointly with the FATF.  Phase 2 will be conducted solely by the UFA and includes people smuggling and implementation support for measures to combat human trafficking and smuggling.

Technical Assistance

The membership held the Annual Forum on Technical Assistance and Training which included 30 individual sessions between members and donors of AML/CFT technical assistance and led to important information sharing and coordination among the UFA’s members, observers, donors and providers.

Members also endorsed a continuing project on de-risking which aimes to identify good practices for risk-based supervision and international cooperation between supervisors. The project will focus on the sectors most exposed to de-risking challenges, in particular remittance providers and related banking services.

 

Photo: Over 450 UFA delegates attended the 20th annual meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka in July 2017. 

20th Annual Meeting