PUT A STOP TO "MONEY LAUNDERING"

Once it had become an active participant in the Europe-wide fight to combat money laundering in 2002, over this period Azerbaijan has had to face a variety of many-sided attitudes towards it on thepart of MONEYVAL, the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe: they either deemed the country to have obvious merits in all the principles put forward by the organisation or reprimanded the banking sector. But it needs to be said that any objective criticism was taken into account by Azerbaijan and dealt with. Any attempt to take an unfounded decision affecting the republic at the last sitting of the committee met with just as swift a reaction, and this has strengthened the country's position at least until 2020.

 It has to be mentioned that MONEYVAL had already set about discussing methods of assessing the national systems of committee members within the framework of the fifth round, although the latter meeting took place at the end of last year.

Back in February 2014, in order to make a regular evaluation, a MONEYVAL special mission visited Azerbaijan, and preliminary bilateral discussions on an accountability project were held in Strasbourg in September. Considerable progress and development was made during these discussions compared with the previous assessment in 2008. We note that Azerbaijan was the first country to undergo assessment in compliance with MONEYVAL's new directions at the end of 2003. They are comprised of a complex of individual assessment criteria complying with each FATF recommendations according to the "40+9" principle (40 recommendations on combating money laundering and nine on combating the financing of terrorism).

But each of the recommendations consists of several paragraphs, comprising approximately 180 sub-articles in total. A single assessment on all articles is not given, and a country receives a separate assessment with regard to each article. Azerbaijan does comply with the FATF recommendations to a considerable extent and the assessment that MONEYVAL has given the country was higher than that received within the framework of the interdepartmental experts' group. MONEYVAL's main demand was that a law should be adopted "On combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism" and that a body should be set up to monitor finances. Azerbaijan has done all of this.

At the last meeting, the MONEYVAL secretariat and representatives of a number of countries tried to introduce changes of a political nature into the reporting process, referring to the rather unproductive system of countering the financing of terrorism and launderingof criminally obtained money in Azerbaijan; they also put forward proposals that special monitoring should be restored in the country. But these proposals were not approved thanks to the firm stance taken by the Azerbaijani delegation and well-founded arguments.

Azerbaijan is subject to a special monitoring regime, which the committee has applied to the country since 2006. During these procedures Azerbaijan has submitted reports on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism at the committee's plenary sessions.

The suspension of this regime and Azerbaijan's transfer to the ordinary assessment procedure was announced at the end of 2009. This decision was taken as a result of the country's achievements in shaping and applying legislation to combat moneylaundering and the financing of terrorism and also because the Central Bank's Financial Monitoring Service started operating.

Once Azerbaijan was no longer subject to the monitoring regime. It also began to submit reports to this organisation on the new initiatives implemented in the country.

"Today several judicial decisions have been taken regarding money laundering and terrorism financing articles, which indicates that such things were taking place," Rufat Aslanli, the chairman of the State Committee for Securities, who heads the Financial Monitoring Service, told Regionplus.

He has said that today reports are being submitted to the service on regular operations amounting to a sum of more than 20,000 manats, so that the financial monitoring body should have an adequate basis for making an analysis. Besides this, the service has organised a centralised online system to collect data and register juridical and natural persons that are suspected of legalising money and property acquired by criminal means and of financing terrorism.

We note that 164,500 items of data on suspicious and current operations were gathered in January to May 2014 compared with 115,015 items in the similar period of 2013.

The Financial Monitoring Service has set itself four main aims in compliance with the strategic development plan up to 2018. Firstly, this is the formation of frameworks for risk-based systems of combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. In particular, the new challenges based on national risk assessment need to be defined and a system of monitoring pawnbrokers and estate agents needs to be set up. The potential for analysing data in accordance with the latest world experience needs to be created, as well as an efficient system of managing the Financial Monitoring Service, and international integration in combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism needs to be promoted.

In keeping with the rules on submitting to the Financial Monitoring Service information on the import and export of currency, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan has begun to draw up a list of the countries, from which visitors should submit detailed information on the source of the currency being brought in and taken out by them. Today there are 17 countries on the list approved by the Financial Monitoring Service. 

The Central Bank has also drawn up rules for conducting operations in foreign currency in Azerbaijan. According to these rules, the sum of foreign currency that can freely be taken abroad within a single working day without opening a bank account will be raised from 1,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars. If a single transfer of more than 50,000 dollars is to be made, a bank account has to be opened. These rules apply to natural persons who are residents and non-residents.

In short, in the view of R. Aslanli, by the next MONEYVAL assessment round, which will not be able to take place earlier than 2020, Azerbaijan will be ready to submit information on an even better system of monitoring the laundering of illegally obtained money.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

In order to create an effective system of measures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism while complying with the international recommendations applied in these fields, MONEYVAL, a committee of experts of the Council of Europe, was set up in 1997 as a tool for assessing and mutually monitoring its member-countries. MONEYVAL unites 30 European countries, including Cyprus, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Russia.