Today the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published Guidance on Criminalising Terrorist Financing. This Guidance paper on the criminalisation of terrorist financing will help countries implement each of the requirements of Recommendation 5, and explains the various aspects that the terrorist financing offence must cover in national legal systems.
To stop the financing of terrorism, countries must start by making it a crime to finance terrorist acts, terrorists, or terrorist organisations.
FATF Recommendation 5 provides measures to assist countries in fulfilling the legal requirements of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (the Terrorist Financing Convention) , and relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions. In addition, FATF Recommendation 5 goes beyond the international legal obligation to further strengthen the measures that countries should have at their disposal to disrupt terrorist financing.
The Guidance on Criminalising Terrorist Financing will help countries implement each of the requirements of Recommendation 5. It explains the various aspects that the terrorist financing offence must cover in national legal systems.
The Guidance emphasises that countries have significant flexibility in determining how they implement each requirement in their national legal system, given that countries have diverse legal, administrative and operational frameworks and different financial systems. The Guidance includes a number of country examples which illustrate how countries with different legal systems have criminalised terrorist financing.
Regardless of the methods that countries have chosen to implement Recommendation 5, the FATF will assess the extent to which they have successfully and effectively implemented this standard, and with it fulfilled their legal obligations pursuant to the Terrorist Financing Convention and relevant UNSCRs.