By ALlSHA HOULIHAN for AML Intelligence
THE UNDER-FIRE Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) today (Thursday) announced it has suspended Russia’s puppet FIU, Rosfinmonitoring (Rosfin).
The grouping of 170 police and customs agencies said it was suspending “Rosfinmonitoring’s membership with the Egmont Group of FIUs, for as long as it is required to protect the interests of the Egmont Group and to ensure the achievability of its objectives.”
To the relief of many law enforcement agencies (LEAs) worldwide, the announcement means the Kremlin will no longer have access to sensitive fincrime intelligence – albeit many LEAs have for some time stopped sharing data with Rosfin.
The Egmont Group said it remains “deeply concerned by the devastating effects of the current Russian military aggression against Ukraine and the negative impact on the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine (FIU of Ukraine).”
The statement was signed by Poland’s Elżbieta Franków-Jaśkiewicz, the interim chair of the group – and one of the most highly respected figures in the global AFC world.
“Trust is severely eroded due to Rosfinmonitoring’s (FIU of the Russian Federation) position regarding the actions and policies of its government, and the ways of communication it has chosen,” the group said in a statement.
“To maintain the Egmont Group’s reputation in the global AML/CFT space, to ensure cohesion in the AML/CFT ecosystem, and to protect other Egmont Group interests and objectives, the Heads of FIUs of the Egmont Group agreed” today to suspend Russia.
Rosfinmonitoring, though nominally independent, acts as an arm of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, five people who have interacted with Rosfin have said.
Rosfin’s director, Yury Chikhanchin, is a security services veteran, according to his official biography.
Marshall Billingslea, a former head of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global watchdog which sets standards for authorities combating financial crime, told a conference two years ago that Rosfin was “firmly under control of the FSB” to ensure that only state-sanctioned transactions were made into and out of Russia.
Egmont’s statement Thursday followed a near-three hour meeting of the various national representatives was far from unanimous at the outset as several agencies initially would not commit to the statement.
The statement emphasized the importance of international cooperation and developing synergies with international partners (including international organizations) to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Egmont Group’s interests and objectives are centered on the requirements for an effective global AML/CFT collaborative system, which is multidimensional and complex. In this system, trust is the key foundation for any cooperation.
The Egmont Group said it will continue to monitor the implementation of these measures for as long as these actions are practical and required to protect the Egmont Group’s interests and objectives.
Earlier this year AML Intelligence reported how MONEYVAL’s executive secretary Igor Nebyvaev was moved out of the role over alleged connections with Russian intelligence.
It followed claims in a German tabloid around his father’s alleged connections with Russian intelligence.
In addition, FATF’s decision to suspend Russia’s membership of the agency also made it harder for a Russian to hold down the key MONEYVAL position.
Russian national Nebyvaev had led the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures (MONEYVAL) since March 2020.
ILivia Stoica-Becht, the Council of Europe’s former head of legal cooperation, replaced Nebyvaev as executive secretary of the agency.
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