UAE CENTRAL BANK ON FATF/CTAG PARTICIPATION

UNCLAS ABU DHABI 001298 SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR NEA/ARP, S/CT, INL/ENT, EB/ESC TREASURY FOR ZARATE, GLASER, AND MURDEN E.O. 12958: NA TAGS: EFIN KCRM PTER ECON TC SUBJECT: UAE CENTRAL BANK ON FATF/CTAG PARTICIPATION REF: STATE 73900 ¶1. (SBU) DCM and EconChief met with UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser Al-Suwaidi on April 11. During that meeting, Al-Suwaidi stated that the UAE continued to be interested in money laundering training opportunities with the USG. He suggested that the UAEG customs authorities could benefit from having anti-money laundering training, especially in the area of trade (commodities) based money laundering). ¶2. (SBU) EconChief used the opportunity to ask the Governor to reconsider participating in the FATF/CTAG technical assistance needs assessment process(reftel). In response, Al-Suwaidi explained that the UAE had recently participated in the IMF's Anti-Money Laundering assessment. He noted that the IMF's assessment had lasted 10 days and covered - among other things - the financial sector, the gold and jewelry markets and the Dubai International Financial Center. He said that he thought the IMF and FATF/CTAG assessments probably covered much of the same ground, although he acknowledged that FATF was focused more on training opportunities. He suggested that he wanted to wait until the IMF finished its report and highlighted weaknesses in the UAE anti money laundering regime, before considering a separate FATF process. As an aside, he briefly discussed FATF's efforts to establish a FATF regional body in the Middle East. He said the UAE would support this, but was interested in becoming a full FATF member in its own right. ¶3. (SBU) Comment: Al-Suwaidi's remarks reflected the UAE's preference for bilateral cooperation with the U.S. rather than participating in a multilateral process. He has previously criticized FATF assessments of non-members (specifically the Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) exercise). Although the Treasury Department's Daniel Glaser had previously explained that this assessment was not/not like the NCCT, we believe that Al-Suwaidi's views of that process likely influenced his decision to opt out of another "multilateral" assessment. Post recommends that we wait until the IMF assessment is completed before again approaching the UAEG on this issue. We will need to provide the governor with concrete reasons why we prefer that the UAEG participate in the FATF/CTAG process, given his demonstrated preference for working bilaterally with the U.S. ALBRIGHT