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Counterterrorist Financing Improves in Saudi Arabia, AML Lags Behind: FATF

By Daniel Bethencourt

Saudi Arabia's efforts against terrorist financing have improved in recent years but officials still tend to conduct only a cursory analysis of suspicious transaction reports and rarely spot more-advanced attempts to launder illicit funds, an intergovernmental group concluded Monday. In a 246-page evaluation, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force found that the 6,370 suspicious transaction reports, or STRs, filed in 2016 to the Saudi Arabia Financial Intelligence Unit, or SAFIU, arrived by mail, fax or telephone, while outdated systems and poorly connected databases severely hamstrung the agency's efforts to organize and review the reports. Large cash deposits or large wire...

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