The G7 yesterday pledged to clamp down on financial support for terrorist networks with a plan to step up intelligence-sharing, freeze assets and tighten reporting rules on international transfers.
The club of wealthy nations has been cooperating to block the financial pipelines that allow terrorists to travel, plan and carry out attacks, but said that more must be done.
“Countering violent extremism and bringing perpetrators to justice remain top priorities for the whole international community,” they said after two days of talks in northern Japan.
“The G7 commits to working together to strengthen the global fight against terrorist financing,” said an action plan to be adopted by the group’s leaders, who meet in Japan next week.
French Minister of Finance Michel Sapin, whose country suffered devastating attacks in November last year and January, said the G7 was now in the “operational phase” of its efforts.
“We will introduce effective tools at our disposal in the war against terrorism financing,” he told reporters. “It is absolutely essential.”
Sapin said that good exchanges between intelligence agencies were vital, “especially to fight against large movements of money by, for example, the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq.”
Another key tool is to counter the cover provided by “prepaid, but anonymous phone cards, movements of cash that allow anonymous access to finances,” he said. “We must trace these.”
The G7 action plan identified “targeted financial sanctions” as critical to hindering terrorist support networks.
It also emphasized the need to freeze terrorist assets, including those of individual militants.
Among specific measures, the bloc committed to reducing the threshold for declaring cross-border cash transactions from US$15,000, 15,000 euros and ¥2 million to US$10,000, 10,000 euros and ¥1 million.
It also said it would provide “continued strong leadership” to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets international standards to combat money laundering and terrorism finance.
While lauding the FATF for establishing standards, it said that “the evolving nature of current terrorist financing threats requires us to adapt our existing measures to combat those threats.”
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