India and the United States Collaborate to Combat Financial Crime

The US-India Dialogue on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Terrorism Financing, jointly chaired by India, aims to improve information sharing and cooperation with regard to financial crime.

A dialogue between Sanjay Malhotra, the Revenue Secretary, the Ministry of Finance, and Brian Nelson, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in the nation’s capital, was conducted by the US Treasury in tandem on December 13. The dialogue aimed to improve communication, cooperation, and data exchange to combat financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing. 

The US-India Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Dialogue released a joint statement, “on December 13, 2023, we, the US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson and Sanjay Malhotra, Revenue Secretary, Indian Ministry of Finance, reconvened and co-chaired the US-India Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Dialogue. The Ministry of Finance hosted the dialogue in New Delhi.” 

According to the joint statement, the India-US AML/CFT dialogue is a productive platform for exchanging viewpoints and best practices regarding how to fortify the combined efforts of the two nations to mitigate financial threats like terrorism funding, money laundering, and other illicit activities worldwide as well as safeguard the global financial systems.

Given that both nations are focused on fostering responsible innovation while reducing the dangers associated with illegal financing, the two nations talked about their respective experiences with virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) during forum sessions. According to recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), both governments recognized the need to expedite the global implementation of AML/CFT standards for virtual assets to resolve regulatory arbitrage effectively.

The dialogue also demonstrated how both nations are working together to promote beneficial ownership reporting transparency. This cooperation includes the adoption of ownership structures, beneficial ownership registries, and tools to enhance data quality and verification information for UBOs. The dialogue is an essential step to combat financial crimes such as terrorist funding or money laundering and towards the joint benefits of financial prosperity. It makes it possible for both authorities to follow the money’s path and identify the criminals. 

India and the US discussed the difficulties that each country is currently having implementing sanctions as well as ways to strengthen information sharing and cooperation to better fight sanctions evasion and terrorist financing locally and internationally.

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