NB plays leading role in combatting money
laundering
The 14th annual meeting of the Asia/Pacific Group (APG) on Money Laundering was held in Kochi, India, from July 18 to 22, with over 320 participants from 41 member jurisdictions and 27 observer jurisdictions and organisations attending.
APG is the leading international organisation in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering Financing of Terrorism (CFT) in the Asia Pacific Region. The APG Annual Meeting provides a platform for members and observers to strengthen international co-operation and discuss important regional and international initiatives in AML and CFT, including measures to improve mutual legal assistance and sharing of financial intelligence information on illicit funds.
Chief Inspector (CIP) Bernard Law and Senior Inspector (SIP) Philip Tsang of the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit of Narcotics Bureau (NB) were members of the Hong Kong delegation to the meeting.
CIP Law, the law enforcement expert of the APG Mutual Evaluation (ME) team, presented the ME report of Laos in the annual meeting. The ME team spent two weeks in Laos in October last year to review, analyse and assess the AML and CFT institutional framework and the level of compliance with international standards.
The recommendations listed in the ME report had far reaching implications for the development of Laos' AML and CFT regime. Members commented that the assessments and recommendations made in the report were comprehensive and appreciated the excellent work of the ME team.
SIP Tsang, the co-leader of the APG Typology Project of "Money Laundering associated with Large-scale Transnational Frauds", delivered the findings of the study in the annual meeting. This one-year project, which started in July last year, was carried out in conjunction with the Malaysian Financial Intelligence Unit. The report received positive comments from members and was subsequently adopted in the meeting. The project report is available on APG Website. (http://www.apgml.org/ Click on "Typologies" > "APG Typologies Publications")
The APG Executive Secretary, Dr Gordon Hook, praised the project team for its effort, and commented: "Typologies reports are important for members as they have identified the issues and trends of the money laundering and terrorism financing that are being perpetrated by criminal syndicates."
CIP
Law
(centre) and the APG ME team at the APG Annual Meeting