MANAMA: The Minister of Finance, Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, pledged full support to the international financial institutions in any CFT capacity building measures agreed upon during the Manama Meeting on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT), as well as working to ensure the implementation of any recommendations made.
The Minister was speaking during the opening session of the Conference on Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) held in Bahrain on Sunday.
“We hope the meeting will declare a way forward on how to further combat terrorist financing,” the Minister said.
In his keynote address, the Minister said that terrorist organisations rely on financing and support networks to sustain operations and launch attacks, and that we need to identify the CFT challenges facing both the MENA region and the world, and to suggest ways that those challenges can be met.
He praised Bahrain’s great deal of experience in combating terrorist financing, both as a member of and home to the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), and as a longstanding contributor along with fellow GCC members to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). However, he stressed that, like many other countries, we need to stay at the forefront of this fight against terrorist financing by adapting to the ways in which terrorist financing methods have changed over the last year or so.
He also expressed hope that the meeting will declare a way forward on how to further combat terrorist financing and thus ensure that concrete steps are taken so that MENA financial institutions and indeed financial institutions worldwide are not used to channel funds to terrorists.
Shaikh Ahmed argued that along with better regulation, improved practices and enhanced diligence, the greatest thing that will help is better communication and understanding of CFT challenges, together with greater co-operation between respective CFT agencies, both domestically and internationally.