Project profile — Enhancing National and Regional Competencies to Combat the Financing of Terrorism

This project aims to strengthen Jordanian and Lebanese institutions against money laundering and terrorist financing threats. It supports national investigators to increase their financial investigation capacities further. It also supports private sector entities in understanding and fulfilling their anti-money laundering objectives and reporting requirements. Project activities include: (1) delivering 2 national-level trainings on terrorist financing investigation for 30 Jordanian and Lebanese financial investigators; (2) delivering 2 awareness-raising forums on human rights and gender inclusion relating to investigating financial crimes for private sector entities; (3) delivering a regional-level experience-sharing exercise on analyzing terrorist financing trends, typologies, and indicators for financial investigation unit analysts; and (4) publishing a post-implementation summary report with recommendations for future interventions.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) enhanced capacity of Lebanese and Jordanian investigators and financial investigation units. This helped to improve their ability to communicate financial intelligence and analysis when conducting money laundering and terrorist financing investigations; (2) increased knowledge and enhanced coordination between priority private sector entities and national financial investigation units in Jordan and Lebanon. This is to identify suspicious transactions and potential indicators of terrorist financing; and (3) increased capacity of financial investigators to adhere to international human rights standards and best practices for gender inclusion when conducting investigation activities.

Results achieved at the end of the project (October 2018) include: (1) supported financial investigators and reporting entities in Lebanon and Jordan in fulfilling their obligations to counter terrorism financing; (2) delivered national-level training for Jordanian Financial investigators in July 2017; (3) delivered a national-level training for Lebanese Financial investigators in September 2017; (4) delivered a national-level awareness-raising forum for Jordanian priority private sector entities in December 2017; (5) delivered a national-level awareness-raising forum for Lebanese priority private sector entities in February 2018; (6) delivered a regional experience sharing exercise for Jordanian and Lebanese financial investigation unit analysts in April 2018; and (7) completed a final report with recommendations for further interventions by senior experts.