Tajikistan intends to tighten control over equity market following recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an official source at Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoynadagon) of parliament told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, the government has worked out appropriate amendments that will be introduced into the country’s law on the equity market.
The amendments reportedly aim at preventing the possibility of the financing of terrorism. Under the proposed amendments, the Ministry of Finance must inform the State Committee for National Security (SCNS), the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor-General’s Office, the Accounting Chamber and the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption about dubious deals involving more than 500,000 somoni worth of securities, real estate or movable property, the source said.
Tajikistan is not member nation of the Financial Action Task Force but it collaborates with this organization in the frame of the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (EAG)
The EAG is a FATF-style regional body uniting Belarus, India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. 16 more states and 17 international and regional organizations have observer status within the EAG.
The Financial Action Task Force (on Money Laundering) (FATF) is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering. In 2001 the purpose expanded to act on terrorism financing. It monitors countries' progress in implementing the FATF Recommendations by ‘peer reviews’ (‘mutual evaluations’) of member countries. The FATF Secretariat is housed at the headquarters of the OECD in Paris.
The FATF's primary policies issued are the Forty Recommendations on money laundering from 1990 and the 9 Special Recommendations (SR) on Terrorism Financing (TF).
Together, the Forty Recommendation and Special Recommendations on Terrorism Financing set the international standard for anti-money laundering measures and combating the financing of terrorism and terrorist acts. They set out the principles for action and allow countries a measure of flexibility in implementing these principles according to their particular circumstances and constitutional frameworks. Both sets of FATF Recommendations are intended to be implemented at the national level through legislation and other legally binding measures.
The FATF completely revised the Forty Recommendations in 1996 and 2003. The 2003 Forty Recommendations require states, among other things, to: implement relevant international conventions; criminalize money laundering and enable authorities to confiscate the proceeds of money laundering; implement customer due diligence (e.g., identity verification), record keeping and suspicious transaction reporting requirements for financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions’; establish a financial intelligence unit to receive and disseminate suspicious transaction reports; and cooperate internationally in investigating and prosecuting money laundering.
The FATF issued 8 Special Recommendations on Terrorism Financing in October 2001, following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Among the measures, “Special Recommendation VIII” (SR VIII) was targeted specifically at nonprofit organizations. This was followed by the International Best Practices Combating the Abuse of Non-Profit Organizations in 2002, released one month before the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines, and the Interpretive Note for SR VIII in 2006.
In February 2004 (Updated as of February 2009) the FATF published a reference document Methodology for Assessing Compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and the FATF 9 Special Recommendations. The 2009 Handbook for Countries and Assessors outlines criteria for evaluating whether FATF standards are achieved in participating countries. In February 2012, the FATF codified its recommendations and Interpretive Notes into one document that maintains SR VIII (renamed “Recommendation 8”), and also includes new rules on weapons of mass destruction, corruption and wire transfers (“Recommendation 16”).
