Egypt, Russia sign agt on financial intelligence cooperation
21.12.2006, 10.12
CAIRO, December 21 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) and Egyptian department for fighting money laundering signed here on Thursday an interdepartmental agreement on combating money laundering. “Russia and Egypt are commonly engaged in fighting money laundering and financing of terrorism,” head of Rosfinmonitoring Viktor Zubkov who signed the document told Itar-Tass.
According to him, Egypt is the first Arab, Middle East and African state with which Russia has concluded such an agreement. As for the world scale, Egypt has become the 33rd country with which Russian financial intelligence has signed such a document. “We conclude this kind of agreements with states that really work within the framework of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Egmont Group – an association of financial intelligence of 101 countries,” Zubkov said. The official added that Egypt has a dominating position in the Middle East and North Africa and Russia is chairing the Eurasian Group on combating money laundering and financing of terrorism (EAG) that was founded on the pattern of FATF.
The signed agreement develops agreements reached during Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s visit to Moscow in November this year. “The Egyptian side is greatly interested in developing cooperation with us. The main thing in the agreement is that we begin a full-fledged information exchange,” the Russian financial intelligence head stated. “Through Egypt, through the headquarters of the League of Arab States (LAS) we will be able to settle issues of coordination between the EAG and Middle East organisation for fighting money laundering and counteracting terrorism financing,” Zubkov emphasised.