The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has posted an update following an experts’ meeting on targeted financial sanctions.  The purpose of the experts’ meeting was to increase collaboration, coordination and sharing of information between relevant bodies and discuss possible reasons for the low level of compliance with targeted financial sanctions.

At the meeting, experts indicated a need to improve global compliance with the preventative measures contained in FATF Recommendations 6 and 7, including by:

• increasing the resources devoted to establishing targeted financial sanctions regimes;
• strengthening political will;
• ensuring that measures to implement targeted financial sanction requirements are based on evidentiary standards of reasonable grounds/basis, and are not reliant on a criminal standard;
• establishing domestic procedures to allow for the review of classified information by appropriate arbiters; and
• when designating domestically, or requesting other countries to take freezing action pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolution 1373, provide sufficient, high-quality information explaining the grounds and basis for the designation.

View FATF targeted financial sanctions experts’ meeting, 22 June 2014