NOVO-OGARYOVO, June 1 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian government has approved a concept of measures to counter money laundering and financing of terrorism, Viktor Zubkov, director of the federal financial monitoring service (FFMS), said when meeting today with the president.
He expressed hopes that the FFMS would coordinate all relevant effort provided for in the concept, which was compiled by an inter-departmental group and various ministries and agencies, including the FFMS, for a period until 2010.
Zubkov believes that his service is not inferior to the leading world financial intelligence task forces.
"Last year 1,500 materials referring to hundreds of transactions were submitted for consideration at law-enforcement bodies, with of many of them supplied evidence for instituting legal proceedings and some have already seen court judgments, passed on them," said Zubkov. "These are major cases involving millions of US dollars and tens of billions of rubles and we are acting on a par with the best intelligence services of the world," said the FFMS head.
Zubkov dwelt on the work, which has been done since last October within the framework of the Euro-Russian regional group. "Its participants are members of the European-Asian Economic Cooperation (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) with observers from virtually all G-8 countries, with the exception of Canada," he said.
"We are working with Canada and hope that it will join the alliance soon," said Zubkov. "Practical work is underway, with such functioning links as the secretariat, groups on legislation, methodology and technical assistance."
"Early in July, Singapore will be the venue of a plenary session of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering and we are going to make a report on our work," said the head of the Russian kind of FATF.
