Written evidence from the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq (SIF0008)

Iraq sought to support international legal controls to prevent the exploitations of the international financial system by terrorist organizations and its exploitation of assets and economic resources (oil, cultural and archaeological heritage and bank deposits) which are under the control of the terrorist group `Daesh’.

Iraq is also keen to achieve a higher degree of coordination in monitoring the suspicious financial activities that contribute to enhancing the capabilities of the extremist and terrorist organizations. The points below are evident of that:

1. Since the ratification of the SC resolution 2253, the republic of Iraq implemented a number of measures to combat the terrorist organizations and prevent the financing of terrorism, it started with:

•                    Ratification of Anti-Money Laundering and Financing Terrorism law 39 in 2015 in Iraq.
• Founding the Assembly of Anti – Money Laundering & Financing Terrorism (AALMFT), which is responsible for the policies and programs of Anti-Money Laundry & Financing Terrorism, and developing the elements for discovering the crimes, plan training for the employee, exchanging informations with all authorities, followed by international updates on this issue (The Assembly AALMFT works independently from the Iraqi Central Bank).
• Founding the Anti-Money Laundering & Finance Terrorism Office which is the executive body of the (AAMLFT), it is responsible for law enforcement, and monitoring the activities of the financial institutions in Iraq.
• Depending on the Security Council resolution 2199, the Iraqi Undersecretary Security Council issued recommendations to stop the sources financing the terrorist group `Daesh’.

2. The total amount of money looted by the terrorist group `Daesh’ from Iraqi banks in (Nineveh, Anbar, Salah Alden, Kirkuk and Diyala) is ($223m) two hundred and twenty three million US Dollars. The response of the Iraqi government was:

• The Iraqi central bank CBI halted all the banks activities and transfers to and from the areas controlled by the terrorist group `Daesh’, and directing all banks to stop their branches activities in those areas.
• The cabinet instructed all its governmental departments to stop all their financial activities and banking transactions to all banks in the provinces under the control of the terrorist group `Daesh’ starting from 10/6/2014.
• The Iraqi government requested from the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) to find a mechanism to monitor and report all money transfers from outside Iraq to those provinces under the control of the terrorist group `Daesh.’
• The government of Iraq established a joint committee headed by the national security advisor with members from all the designated bodies, to check all companies and contractors working in all unstabilized provinces.
• The government of Iraq established a joint committee to halt all properties conveyancing in those provinces and prevent Daesh from transferring the property ownership
• The Central Bank of Iraq CBI started to preform financial analyses to all reports in order to take direct action against the suspected activity.
• The ministry of finance took precautionary measures on the banks under the control of `Daesh’ and direct all government employees to collect their salaries (in person) from the safe neighbouring cities.

3. Iraq is eager to be an active and effective element in the international society, and to adopt its position and orientation to combat terrorism through deeper coordination and cooperation with the international society. Therefore, Iraq needs training and developing of its financial expertise in human resources and the following steps could be taken:

•         A mechanism to receive the notices, entering informations to the information centre followed by gathering and analysing the information to make them available to the authorities.

•         Reinforcement and development of national human resources in the field of financial analysis to monitor money laundering and the financing of terrorism and developing the related criminal investigations.  

•         To reinforce specified technical abilities in the field of banking supervision systems.

•         Establishing a developed supervision information IT program dealing with money laundering and the financing of terrorism, connecting all banking, financing institutes and exchange companies.

•         Providing the Iraqi banking system with the needed technical programs used by the international banking systems related to money movement and transferring.

June 2016