FATF Under Germany: Expand Digital AML/CTF Efforts

Dr. Marcus Pleyer has outlined the objectives for his next two years as president of the global AML watchdog.

AccessTimeIconJul 7, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. UTC
Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. UTC
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The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will prioritize the strengthening of its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing efforts as part of its new leadership. 

  • Dr. Marcus Pleyer, deputy director general in Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance, took over as FATF president from Xiangmin Liu from China. Pleyer began his two-year term on July 1. 
  • In a recent paper, Pleyer laid out his objectives for the next two years. Under Germany’s leadership, the watchdog would continue to build on the anti-money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) work done by the task force. 
  • The paper notes the FATF has been monitoring the risks and opportunities presented by the digitization of economies, and plans to work towards ensuring AML and CTF guidelines can be more efficiently implemented in the private sector. 
  • The FATF held a plenary meeting earlier in June to gauge the regulatory and industry progress in implementing AML regulations for virtual assets. 
  • Some of the other objectives the FATF will pursue include looking into connections between illegal wildlife trade and money laundering, tackling financial schemes associated with ethnically or racially motivated terrorism and a new initiative to look into the financial flows of global migrant smuggling.

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