October 1 2019
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental organization founded 30 years ago to develop and uphold policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, is conducting a peer review (or “mutual evaluation”) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this year.
FATF last assessed the UAE in 2008, and found the country’s systems and frameworks geared to prevent criminal abuse of the financial system to be “satisfactory” at that time. FATF made a number of suggestions for improvement, including expanding the range of predicate offenses in the law, extending customer due diligence (“CDD”) requirements to Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions (“DNFBPs”), clarifying the bases upon which suspicious activities/transactions are expected to be reported, and providing greater powers to enforcement authorities.
