Turkey has recognized the numerous risks it faces from money-laundering and terrorist financing, and has, therefore, taken drastic actions to analyse and assess the country financial risks. The urgent need for improvement of measures has forced the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to assess the anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing systems of the national. Hence, a comprehensive report and recommendations have been provided.
The report noted that the country actions to reduce the risks emerging from designated terrorists organizations were assessed, and from the national risk completed in 2018, money laundering, drug trafficking, human trafficking, fuel smuggling, migrant smuggling are the most challenging risks facing the country.
As a measure to combat these risks, Turkey strengthened laws and regulation and developed a foundation to address issues that may threaten the financial system of the country.
The team commended the measures put in place, but also emphasized the need to improve the execution of the measures in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. They suggested the need to maximize the use of financial intelligence to strengthen financial crime investigations, and that the country needs to formulate strategies that will ensure that criminals are permanently denied the proceeds of the crimes. Recommendations were made on strengthening relationships with foreign counterparts to aid information-sharing, and also to improve the quickness of freezing accounts linked with terrorism.
