News

The 4th Plenary meeting and Working group meetings of the Eurasian group on combating money laundering and financing of terrorism (EAG) took place on May 30-31, 2006 in St. Petersburg (Russian Federation) with the participation of EAG member-states (Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), as well as EAG observer states and organizations (FATF, World Bank, IMF, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, CIS Executive Committee, CSTO, Eurasian Economic Community, SCO, Council of Europe, Interpol, Great Britain, Germany, Georgia, Moldova, Italy, France, Japan, USA, Turkey, Ukraine).

The EAG member-states considered and unanimously fulfilled the request for observer status from Armenia and Afghanistan.

The participants of the Plenary meeting considered and discussed the information regarding the progress in developing AML/CFT legislation and the creation of an FIU. It was noted, that most member-states are successfully solving these issues, however it is necessary to continue providing technical assistance in this sphere.

A discussion was held regarding the preparation to conduct mutual evaluations of national AML/CFT systems. Further areas of cooperation have been defined, including research on the links between corruption and anti-money laundering, dialogue with the private sector, sharing of mutual evaluation reports.

The discussion outlined planning and organization activities for typologies research on the three topics, which were determined earlier, as well as in preparation for the joint FATF/EAG seminar on typologies in Shanghai (China) in November 2006. A presentation of the Typologies Report for 2005 was made.

The implementation of the EAG Donor Conference decisions was discussed at the Plenary and heard information from member-states and observers on the effectiveness of technical assistance.

In addition, a presentation regarding the approaches to creating a concept of building FIU IT-systems in EAG member-states was made by the special working group, created on the basis of the International Training and Methodological Center for Financial Monitoring.

The Plenary discussed a range of other issues and made the relevant decisions.

It has been decided to hold the 5th Plenary meeting in Moscow on December 2006.