Harvard graduate T. Raja Kumar has been the Singapore Police Force Commissioner for four years before entering the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs in 2015 where he served as International Senior Advisor.
Replacing Marcus Pleyer, for the next two years, Mr Kumar will hold the position of president of the Financial Action Task Force. As such, he will be the watchdog of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, focusing on four main priorities.
Strengthening Asset Recovery. Helping countries in improving asset recoveries and operational initiatives from cyber-enabled crimes, as well as increasing collaboration between the FATF, FSRBs and Asset Recovery Networks. The goal will be to develop stronger operational systems for the task force member countries. Deploying collaboration initiatives to help better tackle fraud, scams and ransomware.
Countering Illicit Finance of Cyber-Enabled Crime. Cyber-enabled financial crimes keep on evolving, and organized crime groups are continuously adapting to countermeasures. Member states will need to take on new initiatives to focus on and combat online fraud, scams, ransomware and phishing activities. Law enforcement authorities and government jurisdictions are struggling with such schemes and keeping up with the latest technologies. “The FATF will start a new initiative to focus on ML/TF linked to cyber-enabled fraud and scams.”
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Increasing Effectiveness of Global AML Measures. Improving AML/CFT measures is a key target of this presidency. The FATF will continue and complete the FATF’s work plans to review and ensure that the FATF Standards remain relevant and up to date. Lay out the groundwork and preparation for the 5th round of mutual evaluations by monitoring new ML/TF risks and implementation of best practices and mitigation measures, overseeing the completion of guidance on FATF beneficial ownership information for legal persons, promoting competent authorities’ adoption of data analytics to achieve good AML/CFT outcomes, building regular review of TF risks associated with ISIL, Al Qaeda and their affiliates, raising further awareness of the ML/TF risks in relation to grand and systemic corruption, and last, taking into account the outcomes of the April 2022 FATF Strategic Review.
Reinforcing FATF Partnerships with FSRBs. Continuing forward in the past presidencies’ footsteps, the Singapore Presidency is committed to strengthening the FATF’s partnership with FSRBs. Under the Singapore Presidency, the FATF will closely partner FSRBs to chart out a roadmap for capability and capacity development of the Global Network with the common goal to fight money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing. The roadmap will focus on assisting FSRBs to complete the current round of mutual evaluations, formalize regular dialogue, identify specific areas to improve to aid preparation for the next round of evaluations, and support broader strategic cooperation.
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July 10, 2022 Published by The Financial Action Task Force.
