“Algeria to beef up anti-money laundering policy in line with financial action task force”
In late October 2011, Algeria made a high-level political commitment to work with the “financial action task force” (FATF and MENAFATF) to address its strategic “anti-money laundering and counter- terrorist financing” (AML/CFT) deficiencies in order to live up to international standards, laws and regulations.
- The Algerian authorities have taken serious steps towards improving its AML/CFT regime. However, the financial action task force (FATF) has determined that certain strategic AML/CFT drawbacks remain.
- Algeria is thus determined to work on fully implementing its action plan to address these deficiencies, including by: (1) adequately criminalizing terrorist financing (Special Recommendations I and II).
- (2) Establishing and implementing an adequate legal framework for identifying, tracing and freezing terrorist assets (Special Recommendation III).
- (3) Improving and broadening CDD measures and ensuring that they apply to all financial institutions (Recommendation 5).
- (4) Ensuring a fully operational and effectively functioning Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), in particular addressing the operational autonomy of the FIU and the authority of the FIU to request and access information (Recommendation 26).
- and (5) enacting and implementing appropriate mutual legal assistance legislation (Special Recommendation V).
- The “financial action task force” (FATF) encourages Algeria to address its deficiencies and continue the process of steadily implementing its action plan after broad consultations with a host of countries in the world also concerned by this trans-national nefarious scourge.
- The FATF publication comes in response to the G-20 leaders’ call for the financial action task force (FATF) to reinvigorate its process for assessing countries’ compliance with international AML/CFT standards and to publicly identify high risk jurisdictions. Also, in June and November, the G-20 leaders called for FATF to issue regular updates on jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies.
- The text highlights jurisdictions with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies, for which each jurisdiction has provided a high-level political commitment to address the strategic “anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing” (AML/CFT) deficiencies.
- The financial action task force (FATF) explains its specific concerns regarding each of the jurisdictions and notes it will continue to monitor the implementation of each jurisdiction’s action plan for addressing the deficiencies. On an ongoing basis, FATF will continue to update information on these and other jurisdictions that pose a risk to the international financial system.