The 22nd Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force plenary meeting was held in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain during the period from 24 to 26& November of 2015 under the presidency of the Sultanate of Oman represented by HRH Prince Marwan bin Turki Al Said, the general manager of research and development studies at the Supreme Council for planning and the chairman of the technical committee for combating money laundering and terrorist financing
Furthermore, the plenary meeting discussed during the sessions a set of important topics such as the draft of the Fourth Strategic Plan of the MENAFATF for the period (2016-2018), the Action Plan for 2016 and ways to support the MENAFATF’s budget. The Plenary also discussed the recent initiatives in the area of combating terrorism financing undertaken by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate at the United Nations (CTED) and the World Bank (World Bank), other issues such as the voluntary tax compliance program in Algeria and the principle of (De-risking) and its negatives.
In the framework of the follow-up processes that follow the mutual evaluations, the 22nd plenary discussed & the first update report of the Kingdom of Morocco on the latest developments and procedures taken to improve the anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing regime, the plenary also adopted & 5 follow-up reports for each of the following member countries: the Republic of Algeria, the Sultanate of Oman, the Lebanese Republic, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and the Republic of Iraq, where those reports indicated the extent of progress made by these countries in the development of anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regimes in the light of the corrective action plan in their & mutual evaluation reports. In addition, the plenary adopted the report of each of the mutual evaluation working group and & the technical assistance and typologies working group.
The meetings of the mutual evaluation working group, the technical assistance and typologies working group, the national risk assessment working group, the financial intelligence units forum and the Sub-Committee of the forum were held on the margins of the plenary.