New Delhi: The Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) and the Financial Intelligence Unit-Qatar (FIU-Qatar) have decided to strengthen their cooperation in monitoring money laundering and terrorist financing activities undertaken by various entities, including virtual digital asset service providers (VDA-SP).

The FIU-IND is a central national agency responsible for receiving, processing and analyzing information related to suspicious financial transactions, reporting directly to the Economic Intelligence Council (EIC) headed by the Union Finance Minister.

The decision was taken during a visit by a nine-member FIU-IND delegation on November 4-5 to its office in New Delhi, a Finance Ministry statement said on Tuesday. FIU-Ind Chief Vivek Aggarwal received the delegation led by Sheikh Ahmed Al Thani, FIU-Qatar Chief.

“The visit marked an important step in strengthening relations between the two FIUs and their commitment to assist each other in combating the menace of money laundering and terrorist financing,” the statement said.

During the visit, Aggarwal and his Qatari counterpart discussed current practices as well as possible areas of future collaboration between the two organizations, the statement said.

They discussed areas such as IT systems used by the respective jurisdictions, FIU-IND public-private partnership initiative, private-private partnership for India Reporting Entity Alliance, strategic analysis and various tools used by the two FIUs as well as the FIU. -IND experience in the field of virtual digital asset service providers (VDA-SP), it says. “In addition, methods of effective information exchange were also discussed and deliberated,” the statement added.

“FIU-Qatar highly appreciated the IT system (FINNET 2.0) used by FIU-IND and mentioned that it is one of the most sophisticated systems used by any FIU,” said the press release.

FIU-Qatar and FIU-IND have cooperated over the years, through the informal exchange of information on offenses related to money laundering and terrorist financing. Both FIUs are members of the Egmont Group and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and have been actively associated with various initiatives taken by these international organizations, the statement said.

In addition to the above, the two FIUs, in order to strengthen cooperation, have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the exchange of information regarding money laundering, terrorist financing and associated predicate offenses in June 2016.