Tentatively set for April 20-24, the conference aims to bring the public and private sectors in the UAE and the Middle East to discuss and share information on advanced financial crime prevention.
Nicolas Le Moignan, director of financial crime prevention, International Financial Crime Prevention & Compliance Training (IFCCT), said that senior officials from international organisations have confirmed to participate in the proposed Middle East meeting.
But he said the group is studying on how to deal with a UAE law prohibiting the public and private sectors to work together on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML-CFT).
“Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism is one of our fields of expertise, but there is a legal restriction in the UAE regarding the public-private cooperation on this matter,” he said in a phone call.
He said the recent private-sector dialogue, or PSD Conference, in Dubai wherein the UAE expressed support for calls by the US to combat financial crimes through government and private sectors cooperation had caught the attention of IFCCT.
“To prove its critical resolve, the UAE has put in place a strong legal and regulator framework to improve the efficacy and enforcement of money laundering and terrorist finance measures,” said Abdulrahim Mohamed Al Awadi, assistant executive director and head of anti-money laundering (AML) & suspicious cases unit, UAE Central Bank, before the December 12 event.
The PSD conference pointed out that global activities involving money laundering and terrorist financing has reached Dh3.67 trillion ($ 1 trillion).
Patrick O’Brien, assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, US Department of Treasury, had said that Washington would continue to protect the international financial system from transnational crimes including terrorism.
Le Moignan said the IFCCT and its faculty have worked closely with the UN, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) created during the 1989 G-7 Summit in Paris, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Commission and the US Federal Reserve, among others.
“We have worked assiduously over a long period of time to assemble a faculty of experts that we believe is second to none, hence course elements will always be delivered by presenters whose core competencies and expertise precisely match the subject matter,” he said in an e-mailed outline for the planned Abu Dhabi meeting.
A division of publishing and communications firm Faircount Media Group, IFCCT’s recent symposium and training courses on advanced financial crime prevention included those held in Hong Kong on October 8-12 for the Asia-Pacific region and for the Americas and the Caribbean on Cayman Islands on June 11-15.
