The Kingdom has hosted numerous domestic and international conferences and symposiums, and offered training courses on anti-money-laundering issues. The first meeting of the FATF outside Paris was held in the Institute of Banking (IOB) in 1994. In addition, there has been effective participation of the Kingdom in the membership of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and permanent participation in the FATF’s meetings. 3. The Anti-Money Laundering Unit was established at SAMA and is provided with highly qualified and trained staff. Since 1995, commercial banks have been obliged to set up similar units to cooperate with each other, with SAMA’s Unit and with the concerned security authorities. 4. In 1995, SAMA issued guidelines to all banks operating in the Kingdom on preventing and combating money-laundering operations. These guidelines are derived from the Forty Recommendations and the subsequent recommendations, in particular applying the principle of “Know Your Customer”, monitoring suspicious transactions, and informing competent security authorities (Financial Investigation Unit) of suspicious activities. These guidelines were updated once in 2003 and again in 2008. 5. For the past ten years, SAMA has collected information on the methods and techniques of money laundering, and provided banks operating in the Kingdom with such information for the purpose of building a database in this regard to be linked automatically with the goal of tracking money laundering activities. 6. SAMA’s inspection team makes periodical inspection visits to banks to insure their proper application of instructions and regulations.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was established by the end of the eighties of the last century and the Financial Action Task Force for the Middle East and North Africa (MENAFATF) was founded in the middle of this decade. The Kingdom is an active member in these two groups. BIS Review 54/2010  1  In 2003, the Anti-Money Laundering Law, which provided for criminalizing offenses related to money laundering was issued, followed by its Executive Regulations. The issuing of this Law and its Executive Regulations has helped government organs and their subordinate entities concerned with combating money laundering to develop necessary mechanisms and procedures to implement the Anti-Money Laundering Law and related rules and ensure that they are fully complied with. These organs have established specialized departments responsible for implementing these rules (compliance function), appointed qualified human resources (compliance officers), and allocated human and financial resources necessary to enable them to perform their functions properly. At the same time, each supervisory government authority has enacted rules and regulations derived from the provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Law and its Executive Regulations and included them in its by-laws in a way commensurate with the work of those organs. Within the framework of the kingdom’s efforts to combat money laundering, I would like to highlight the following: 1. The Permanent Committee for Combating Money Laundering, which consists of representatives from seven ministries and government departments, has been established at SAMA to deal with issues related to money laundering. 2.