From February 19 to 23, the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine (hereinafter – the SFMS) (under the quota of the Council of Europe's MONEYVAL Committee and with the support of the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine (EUACI) project) will participate in the FATF Plenary and relevant Working group meetings in Paris (French Republic).

These meetings will be held on the eve of the second anniversary of the unprovoked, full-scale and bloody invasion of Ukraine by the RF.

During these meetings, among other issues on the agenda, it is planned to consider an important issue for Ukraine regarding the FATF’s further response to the violation by the RF of the AML/CFT/CPF Standards as a result of the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine.

In this regard, the SFMS has prepared a visualization “Global picture of protection of the international financial system from the AML/CFT/CPF risks generated by the RF as a result of the invasion of Ukraine”. The visualization is available here.

This visualization clearly demonstrates:

• the state of the Global AML/CFT/CPF financial system before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine [as of February 2024];
• changes in the functioning of key actors in the Global AML/CFT/CPF financial system before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine;
• disruption of ties between key international organizations and jurisdictions with the RF after its invasion, which is aimed at ensuring the integrity and stability of the Global AML/CFT/CPF financial system;
• targeted destructive steps to destroy the Global AML/CFT/CPF financial system’s security infrastructure, in particular by creating gateways to it for countries under sanctioned by the UN Security Council and blacklisted by the FATF.

The SFMS fully ensures the fulfillment of its obligations to maintain the confidentiality of closed FATF processes. In this context, the visualization is based on the analysis of exclusively open sources information and public data.

Currently, the focus should be on curbing Russia’s growing efforts to strengthen its ties with Iran and North Korea, which have direct signs of violations of UN Security Council Resolutions and, therefore, certain FATF Recommendations.

In this regard, on the eve of the meetings, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine jointly with the SFMS issued a press release, which can be found here.

“A year since the FATF suspension, russia’s deliberate non-compliance with FATF principles and UN sanctions, increasing non-transparency and continued malicious cyber activities are making it one of the riskiest jurisdictions for financial crime. Indisputable evidence continues to mount that russia’s illicit activities threaten global peace and security. We are confident that FATF will treat this issue with utmost urgency during the upcoming plenary to help protect global financial security,” Head of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine Igor Cherkaskyi said.