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The Financial Action Task Force must take steps to clamp down on governments that use financial intelligence and laws and regulations against illicit finance to target and silence political opponents, journalists and other critics, a London-based policy center has warned. In reports published this month, the Royal United Services Institute concluded that the group's standards against money laundering and terrorist financing are increasingly, purposefully wielded not only by authoritarian states, but also by ostensibly democratic states, against parties they view as a threat to stability and their own rule. "The FATF standards are used as a ... pretense by many...