Accra, 7 November 2025 – This week, the FATF and GIABA hosted the Joint Experts Meeting (JEM) in Accra, Ghana. Over the course of three days, more than 270 experts - including 73 from the private sector - from over 40 countries gathered to share the latest insights on money laundering and terrorist financing risks and responses. Representatives from the FATF Secretariat, as well as RTMG Co-Chairs, Maarten Pijls and Smarak Swain, and PDG Co-Chair, Elad Wieder, attended the meetings, and joined other experts to moderate the discussions.

Addressing the meeting, FATF President Elisa de Anda Madrazo highlighted the importance of the topics addressed this week: “Terrorist financing continues to destabilise communities and undermine peace and security. Trade-based financial crimes and fraud erode trust in financial systems and divert resources away from communities in need. These challenges are global, and they demand a united, strategic, and operational response. The Joint Experts Meeting brings together the experts at the heart of this response. Law enforcement agencies, customs officials, and financial intelligence units, to name but a few, play a vital role in detecting, investigating, and disrupting financial crime.”

In his opening remarks, Deputy Finance Minister of Ghana, Thomas Nyarko Ampem, emphasised that the growing complexity of financial crimes calls for strengthened international collaboration: “We must strengthen our institutions, close the regulatory gaps, and foster real-time intelligence sharing among countries in the region. This is the only way we can collectively protect our economies and ensure financial integrity.”

The Joint Experts Meeting, held annually, provides an opportunity for participants from various government agencies as well as international bodies to exchange knowledge and share experiences, and together identify challenges as well as best practices for countering illicit finance. Hosting this meeting jointly with GIABA allows the FATF to listen to regional partners and experts to better understand their experiences and operational realities. Nigeria and Senegal, under the FATF’s guest jurisdiction initiative, have also directly contributed regional perspectives to the FATF and helped shape the responses.

This year’s meeting addressed a number of critical topics related to the global efforts to fight financial crime, including fraud, terrorist financing and trade-based financial crimes. It also included meetings with the private sector to strengthen public-private partnerships and the risk-based approach.

Insights from the discussions will inform FATF’s ongoing work, which will be discussed further at the February 2026 Plenary, and GIABA’s ongoing project on trade-based financial crimes due in November 2026.