The Central Bank of Kuwait has been engaged in the combat of money laundering for more than ten years, even before the issuance of the legislation that criminalised money laundering in Kuwait. Facing the problem of money laundering at such an early stage demonstrates the Central Bank's recognition of the urgency of their responsibility towards the banking and financial system, said Sheikh Salem Abdul Aziz Al-Sabah, Governor of the CBK. After expressing the CBK's commitment to denounce and fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism in a opening statement given at the First Anti-Money Laundering & Combating the Financing of Terrorism Conference, Sheikh Salem Al-Sabah stressed that the CBK continually follows the international community's efforts in this field adopting the standards and recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision and the methodology of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in this area.
Another key issue addressed by Sheikh Salem was the CBK's efforts in training employees of the Supervision Section in the CBK and in the banking and financial units so that they become familiar with the threats of money laundering. Training also aims at enabling employees in the sector to trace suspicious patterns and understand the way money launderers operate. Money laundering training programmes held at the Institute of Banking Studies in Kuwait, due to their relevance, are becoming permanent now. Furthermore, Sheikh Salem stated that the CBK revised its directives to banks in October 2002 enhancing their comprehensiveness and specifying the punishments to be imposed on those banks that fall short of meeting their responsibilities in setting and applying the policies and regulations necessary for the control of money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The CBK's directives require the external auditor of each bank to include in his report a clear opinion about the extent of each bank's compliance with all laws, resolutions, directives, policies and regulations related to these illegal activities, he said. Another step taken by the CBK was the establishment of the Kuwait Financial Intelligence Unit (KFIU), an independent unit headed by the governor of the CBK which assists the Public Prosecutor's Office in these matters, manages a database on the subject and provides training.
| All this is dry as dust, expressed in bureaucratic language, and essential to the prosecution of the war. Good for Kuwait. |
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