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Editor’s Note: This month, the ACAMS moneylaundering.com legal team provides an overview of the Egmont Group’s history, focusing on financial intelligence units that have either been suspended or expelled for failing to abide by the organization’s standards.

The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, a platform through which 167 FIUs across the world exchange data on attempts to launder money or finance terrorism, warned national governments on March 3 against “misusing” financial intelligence to silence their political opponents at home and quash dissent by nonprofit groups and other critics.

Egmont emphasized in the warning that an FIU exists primarily to receive and review confidential data that banks and other institutions submit on suspected financial criminals and potentially illicit transactions, then, depending on the country’s particular model, pass those findings on to law enforcement and other relevant agencies.

Operational autonomy and freedom from political influence are key components of an FIU’s mission, the group noted.

Egmont’s warning does not single out any offending jurisdiction by name, but comes four years after the group suspended and threatened to expel Nigeria’s FIU, or NFIU, for repeatedly failing to keep details of suspicious transaction reports, or STRs, and information shared by international partners confidential.

In announcing the suspension, Egmont also questioned the “legal basis and clarity of the NFIU’s independence” from Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the law enforcement agency that houses it.

Similar violations, particularly a lack of operational autonomy, triggered the second suspension of the Salvadoran Financial Investigations Unit, or UIF El Salvador, from the Egmont Group in October 2018, nine years after Egmont first suspended the agency in response to shortcomings in the Central American country’s legislation against terrorist financing.

Both FIUs have since rejoined Egmont.

In October 2019, more than a year after announcing the NFIU’s suspension, Egmont concluded that Nigerian officials had addressed the agency’s lack of independence and problems with STR confidentiality. UIF El Salvador regained admission within months of its original suspension, and rejoined the second time following Egmont’s plenary meeting in July 2019.

The Vatican’s Financial Information Authority triggered a suspension in November 2019 amid concerns over the security of the agency’s communications with other FIUs, but was reinstated two months later after upgrading its controls.

Egmont has expelled at least two FIUs.

In addition to losing the ability to communicate with other FIUs through Egmont’s secure web system, suspended agencies are also excluded from the group’s meetings and training sessions.

Bolivia’s FIU was kicked out in December 2008 for not building adequate controls against terrorist financing, but rejoined the platform in July 2013. Egmont expelled Syria’s FIU, the Combating Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Commission, in July 2014 for not paying membership fees, but eventually readmitted the agency.

Contact Larissa Bernardes at lbernardes@acams.org