A global group of government anti-money-laundering agencies said that financial institutions have "not done enough to police suspicious financial activity" by officials at FIFA, and cautioned banks to "step up scrutiny," according to Hosenball & Wolf of REUTERS. The warning from the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force "came in the wake of last month's indictment" by the U.S. of nine current and former FIFA officials and five business execs on a series of corruption charges, including bribery, money laundering and wire fraud. In a statement, which has now been removed from the agency's website, FATF said that financial institutions "do not appear to have given a sufficient amount of scrutiny to the financial activities of the officials concerned, as many of these allegedly corruption-related transfers passed through the international financial system undetected." FATF, whose members include the U.S., China, Brazil, Switzerland and many other European countries, said that an "ongoing public debate about the integrity of an entity should raise flags to financial institutions." As a result they should "treat customers that are related to that entity as high risk customers." FATF President Roger Wilkins said that he took the "decision to remove the statement from the agency's website over concerns about its phrasing and a lack of concrete evidence to support the claims" (REUTERS, 6/22).
