Paris, 16 November 2023 – The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) today released amendments to the FATF Recommendations which will provide law enforcement, financial intelligence units, prosecutors, other asset recovery practitioners and competent authorities with a more robust toolkit to target and confiscate criminal assets.
Criminals are able to move assets quickly and easily across borders with the aid of technology. These revised Recommendations will help countries respond to the speed of criminal activity and equip them to succeed by introducing new tools, closing loopholes, and emphasising actions to target and capture criminal proceeds at the opportune moment.
At their 2022 Meeting, FATF Ministers expressed concern that efforts to confiscate the proceeds of crime remain insufficient compared to the volume of criminal assets flowing through the global financial system and infiltrating national economies. FATF thus made it a strategic priority to improve asset recovery outcomes under the Singapore Presidency. Effective asset recovery removes the financial incentive for criminal activity, limits the capacity of organised criminal groups and terrorists to threaten safety and security, and, importantly, enables assets to be returned to victims of crime, including nations harmed by corruption and tax offences.
The FATF has spearheaded global efforts to strengthen the legal and operational frameworks which underpin countries’ asset recovery outcomes. These efforts have culminated in the first substantive change to the FATF Recommendations related to asset freezing, seizure, confiscation, forfeiture, and associated international cooperation since the Standards were first developed in 1990, and are necessary to help countries build more effective asset recovery systems to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains and protect the international financial system.
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