Azerbaijan, Baku, September 3 / Trend , N.Ismayilova /
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) expects mitigation in the position of the expert group of the Council of Europe's Moneyval on the activities to combat laundering of "dirty money" in the country already in the near future as a result of ongoing negotiations, the Chairman of CBA Elman Rustamov said on September 2.
Azerbaijan's adopting the Bill on Counteraction to Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism already allowed Moneyval to mention positive achievements of the country in its recent report.
"Soon Azerbaijan working group will visit headquarter of Moneyval, and before that all efforts will be made to fulfill all the primary obligations," said Rustamov.
In addition, the CBA will use its experience to create the financial monitoring service. According to Rustamov, the president should appoint the director of the service and his/her deputy in the near future. Technical assistance to the Central Bank in institutionalizing service is provided by the International Monetary Fund, of which mission is currently in Baku.
The head of the inter-departmental anti-money laundering working group, chairman of the State Committee for Securities Rufat Aslanli said formerly that the plenary meeting of Moneyval already decided to transfer to bureau the right to suspend monitoring regime as a whole if all the tasks provided in the presidential decree on entry of the law into force are fulfilled. Currently, the charter of the financial monitoring center to be established under the Central Bank has been prepared and presented for approval.
The service should organize a centralized electronic information system to collect data, register legal entities and individuals, on which the financial monitoring service has information about participation in the legalization of money and property acquired by criminal means and the financing of terrorism.
The Service will held monitoring on credit organizations, insurance and reinsurance organizations, professional participants of securities market, leasing services of credit organizations, money transfers through post offices and other organizations, pawnshops, investment funds, transactions with precious metals and stones, and buying products from them and non-governmental and religious organizations, organizers of lotteries, people providing services on real estate sale-purchase (realtors) as well as lawyers, accountants, real estate transactions, client money, securities and property, client bank and deposit accounts.
Azerbaijan was the first country to be assessed at the late 2003 in line with the provisions of Moneyval. These provisions envisage a complex of separate assessments in line with the every FATF standard and principle of "40+ 8" (40 standards to fight money laundry and 8 - financing terrorism). Each of the standards has several paragraphs with a total number of 180 subparagraphs.
Azerbaijan was referred with the category meeting the standards of FATF countries. After that the standards were supplemented with new standards on counteraction to financing of terrorism. The second evaluation was conducted in 2008, which was also described as constructive.
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