All Eurasian Group members to set up financial watchdogs - Zubkov

Financial intelligence services will be established in 2007-2008 in all member-countries of the Eurasian Group on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, Viktor Zubkov, the group's chairman and head of the Russian Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) told journalists.

"The situation with the fight against money laundering in countries that are members of the Eurasian Group will be drastically reversed in 2007-2008. All of the Eurasian Group's member-nations will have basic laws and financial intelligence services, which will help make information sharing with any country more effective," he said. It will be a new approach to countering such crimes, he added.

Five of the group's seven member-countries have already set up financial watchdogs and adopted basic laws. Such laws will be adopted in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in the first quarter of 2007, Zubkov said. "Progress has been made. It will take us a couple of years or so to establish such a system in all of the group's member-nations. This system will then integrate with the international system, which will benefit all countries," he said.

The Eurasian Group includes Russia, Belarus, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

Source: Interfax