To establish control over the correct implementation of AML/CTF standards, the FATF created organizations in each specific region. One of such watchdogs is The Asia Pacific Group (APG)—a FATF-style regional body (FSRB) that regulates financial crime across 41 countries.
How Asia Pacific Group affects businesses
The APG works in several directions. The main goal is to ensure that member states adopt, implement and enforce the FATF-approved anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing standards in the Asia Pacific region. These international standards are contained in the Forty Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force.
- Assessing compliance level
The APG controls and assesses the levels of compliance in the countries comparing them to the global AML/CFT standards.
- Blocklisting non-compliant countries
Failure to meet its standards, results in the APG placing the country in the Enhanced Expedited Follow-up List (Block List) of FATF. For example, The APG has found Pakistan does not comply with 32 of the 40 compliance parameters of terror financing and money laundering.
- Warning institutions of high-risk countries
The FATF blocklist is directly related to the banking system and international trade. Any payments to beneficiaries on this list are considered suspicious. Moreover, often financial institutions generally refuse to conduct operations with persons from these states in order to avoid additional checks from the regulatory authorities.
- Spreading financial crime awareness in the region
The APG actively works with financial and non-financial institutions, NGOs, training centers and universities to identify and respond to new and emerging trends, methods, risks and vulnerabilities. People in Asia-Pacific are poorly informed about global issues related to money laundering and terrorist financing and t helps to prevent innocent from being involved in crime.
Note: APG doesn’t investigate money laundering cases. If any organization has specific issues related to possible money laundering, terrorist financing, or other serious crimes, they should contact local law enforcement agencies.
The APG plays a key role in reducing the threat of international terrorism and ensuring the transparency, reliability and security of the financial system of the Asia-Pacific region. It develops intra-regional cooperation between countries and represents the interests of the region on the world stage as the most influential of the FATF-style regional bodies.
