RGP Superintendent Edgar Lopez who is seconded to the Gibraltar Financial Intelligence Unit (GFIU) has just returned from a two day international workshop in Riga, Latvia, on ‘How to Improve Effectiveness in Counter Proliferation Financing’.

This is part of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Immediate Outcome (IO11) which is designed to prevent persons and entities involved in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) from raising, moving and using funds consistent with the relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR).

Immediate Outcome 11 is one of the FATF standards being assessed by the Council of Europe’s Moneyval evaluators who conducted an onsite visit last month in Gibraltar.

The event, hosted by the Latvian Financial Intelligence Unit in cooperation with the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was attended by practitioners from 30 jurisdictions where expert speakers presented on best practices and experiences in dealing with targeted proliferation financial sanctions.

Superintendent Lopez said that the event demonstrated that jurisdictions need to have a clear understanding of the risk exposure of the threat of proliferation of WMDs especially in finance centres where the risk may increase if criminals or proliferators use complex financial structures to fund prohibited items or dual-use goods that can be used to build nuclear weapons by state or non-state actors.

He added: “Like money laundering and terrorist financing, detecting proliferation financing can be greatly improved by ensuring that there are strong private/ public partnerships to manage legal and reputational risks. Therefore raising awareness on this topic is a key role of the GFIU under its outreach program and we want to strengthen Gibraltar’s CPF regime as we are doing with Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.”

The Gibraltar Financial Intelligence Unit recently published Guidance Notes on Financial Sanctions which is available online at www.gfiu.gov.gi/sanctions.