By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
GILES Thomson, the new President of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) has unveiled a plan to tackle the global surge in fraud.
In his inaugural speech as head of the AML watchdog, Thomson said that the FATF will draw up an action plan between now and October.
The body will ask banks, regulators and policymakers for details on fraud typologies, with a “particular [focus]” on scam compounds.
“We will very quickly then move on in a second stage,” Thomson said. “To look at what is working well, best practices, and how we can scale those.
“The intention is to come out quite between now and February [2027] with recommendations about where the FATF can go further. And what more we can do using our existing FATF toolkit.”
Thomson said the FATF will form a “private sector consultative group”.
“[This is] to help guide the FATF project team working on all of this,” he said.
“The aim is to work towards a large event that we will host in the spring of next year, called the ‘Global Response Against Fraud’, building on the Global Forward Summit.”
The FATF said it will switch focus from February 2027. From then until the end of the UK presidency in June 2028, the body will concentrate on “implementing those actions as best we can”.
FATF President warns of global fraud threat
Thomson outlined the plan in the first day of his two year term as President of the FATF.
He said that action is crucial as scams and fraud are growing at an alarming rate.
“The scale of the threat from fraud costs $500 billion a year across the world,” he said.
“[It] is the predominant predicate offense in 90% of the FATF mutual evaluations done across the global network in our last round.
Thomson added: “FATF is keenly aware of the growing calls and international leadership to combat fraud.
“We recognize that the FATF is not going to be the entire solution at a global level. But we think we can be a much bigger part of the solution through the global network that we have.”
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