Azernews.Az

BAKU – Training sessions for the newly established Financial Monitoring Service and other Azerbaijani financial institutions organized by the OSCE Office in Baku to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism began Monday.

Representatives of 46 banks are participating in the sessions on transaction reporting methodologies. The event aims to foster a sound business-enabling environment in Azerbaijan and to enhance financial institutions' capacity to comply with the relevant legislation and international requirements, according to the OSCE website.

"Financial institutions are at the center of the fight against money-laundering and the financing of terrorism," said Jan Olsson, Head of the Economic and Environmental Unit of the OSCE Office in Baku. "Their ability to deliver qualitative reports on suspicious transactions to the Financial Monitoring Service is essential. This training course will help them improve their methodologies to deliver such reports."

Since 2009, Azerbaijan has adopted legislation on anti-money laundering, amended more than 100 legal provisions and established a financial intelligence unit in measures following recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force, an inter-governmental body that develops and promotes policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The Task Force subsequently removed Azerbaijan from its monitoring process.