Parliamentary Intelligence-Security-Forum in Budapest
The Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum will help make the world a safer place for everyone through international collaboration among parliamentarians on security and technology issues.
Congressman Robert Pittenger Chairman, Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum presents:
Andreas Frank, AML/CFT advisor for the Bundestag, Council of Europe and the European Parliament (Germany)
Hon. Frank made remarks regarding illicit financial flows (IFF). IFF, as he explained, are illegal movements of money or capital from one country to the other. After that, he talked about the Taliban’s involvement in this practice and their sources of income, which includes:
- Drugs – $560 million
- Mining – $537 million
- Extorsion and taxes – $215 million
- Charitable donations – $322 million
- Exports – $322 million
- Real estate – $107 million He then went on to explain how corruption was the most serious threat to war on terror.
- The US government has spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan
- More on Afghanistan that the reconstruction of Western Europe after WWII
- Reconstructing Afghanistan has been the largest expenditure to rebuild a single country in US history
- 30% of the US taxpayers’ funds were misappropriated
- Corruption has eroded the legitimacy of the Afghan government, limiting its effectiveness, and bolstering support to the opposing insurgency Afterwards, he changed the topic to talk a little about climate change. According to NATO, climate change is a threat multiplier. Then he made remarks regarding environmental crime, which is an ongoing war between autocracies and democracies. What needs to happen?
- As an inherently transnational issue, global money laundering is perhaps the definite problem in cross-border crime
- The G-7 founders of FATF must take lead again in strengthening and enforcing global norms
- Implementation and enforcement of the AML/CFT norms need to be properly resourced
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