Security Council Resolution 2462 (2019) [on Prevention and Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism]

S/RES/2462 (2019)View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Security Council, under agenda item 31 Threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts, published in 2019.

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 subjects

Counter-Terrorism International Cooperation Sanctions Terrorism Terrorism Financing

What’s in this document?

50 operative paragraphs

Reaffirms its resolution 1373 (2001) and in particular its decisions that all States shall prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts and refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists;

Emphasizes its decision in resolution 1373 that all Member States shall criminalize the wilful provision or collection, by any means, directly or indirectly, of funds by their nationals or in their territories with the intention that the funds should be used, or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in order to carry out terrorist acts; and its decision in resolution 2178 that all Member States shall establish serious criminal offenses regarding the travel, recruitment, and financing of foreign terrorist fighters;

Highlights that the obligation regarding the prohibition in paragraph 1 (d) of resolution 1373 applies to making funds, financial assets or economic resources or financial or other related services available, directly or indirectly, for the benefit of terrorist organizations or individual terrorists for any purpose, including but not limited to recruitment, training, or travel, even in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act;

Strongly urges all States to implement the comprehensive international standards embodied in the revised Forty FATF Recommendations on Combating Money Laundering, and the Financing of Terrorism and Proliferation and its interpretive notes;

Decides that all States shall, in a manner consistent with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international refugee law, ensure that their domestic laws and regulations establish serious criminal offenses sufficient to provide the ability to prosecute and to penalize in a manner duly reflecting the seriousness of the offense the wilful provision or collection of funds, financial assets or economic resources or financial or other related services, directly or indirectly, with the intention that the funds should be used, or in the knowledge that they are to be used for the benefit of terrorist organizations or individual terrorists for any purpose, including but not limited to recruitment, training, or travel, even in the absence of a link to a specific terrorist act;

Demands that Member States ensure that all measures taken to counter terrorism, including measures taken to counter the financing of terrorism as provided for in this resolution, comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international refugee law;

Calls upon Member States to conduct financial investigations in terrorism related cases and to seek ways to address the challenges in obtaining evidence to secure terrorist financing convictions;

Further calls upon Member States to more effectively investigate and prosecute cases of terrorist financing and to apply, as appropriate, effective, proportionate, and dissuasive criminal sanctions to individuals and entities convicted of terrorist financing activity;

Underscores the need to ensure all Member States are in full compliance with the measures imposed by the Security Council in resolution 2368 (2017) and recalls that the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team mandate includes gathering information on instances of reported non-compliance with the sanctions measures imposed in resolution 2368 (2017), including by collating information from all relevant sources and that such reporting should be discussed in the Committee;

Stresses the need for effective implementation of asset freezing mechanisms pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001), including considering third party requests from other States;

Calls on States to consider making publicly available their national or regional asset freezing lists pursuant to resolutions 1373 (2001), 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015);

Stresses the need for robust implementation of the measures outlined in paragraph 1 of resolution 2368 (2017) and urges all States to participate actively in implementing and updating the ISIL (Da’esh) & Al-Qaida Sanctions List and to consider including, when submitting new listing requests, individuals and entities involved in the financing of terrorism;

Calls on States to invest resources in the implementation of sanctions regimes pursuant to resolutions 1373 (2001), 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015), and in seizure of funds in the course of investigations;

Urges all States to assess specifically their terrorist financing risk and to identify economic sectors most vulnerable to terrorist financing, including but not limited to non-financial services, such as, inter alia, the construction, commodities and pharmaceutical sectors, in line with FATF standards and welcomes guidance issued by the United Nations, including the “UNODC Guidance manual for Member States on terrorist financing risk assessments” and the FATF in that regard;

Urges Member States which have not yet done so to establish operationally independent and autonomous financial intelligence units with a view to strengthening their framework to prevent and counter the financing of terrorism, in line with FATF standards;

Calls upon Member States to reinforce the access to information and terrorist financing analytical capacity of their financial intelligence units, including by developing together with competent authorities dedicated risk indicators, and by cooperating with the private sector concerning the evolution of the trends, source and methods of terrorist financing;

Urges Member States to establish or strengthen, at the national level, a framework allowing competent national authorities, in particular financial intelligence units, intelligence services, law enforcement agencies, prosecutorial and/or judicial authorities, to gather and share information on the financing of terrorism;

Encourages Member States to build the capacity of their financial oversight and regulatory systems in order to deny terrorists the space to exploit, raise and move funds, including by ensuring an effective implementation of reporting and disclosure requirements by the private sector as well as by taking into account the dedicated country assessments of relevant entities such as the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and the FATF and its Global Network;

Calls upon Member States to intensify and accelerate the timely exchange of relevant operational information and financial intelligence regarding actions or movements, and patterns of movements, of terrorists or terrorist networks, including Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) and FTF returnees and relocators, in compliance with international law, including international human rights law, and domestic law, including by:

Ensuring that competent authorities can use financial intelligence shared by financial intelligence units, and relevant financial information obtained from the private sector, in compliance with international law, including international human rights law;

Enhancing the integration and use of financial intelligence in terrorism related cases, including through enhanced inter-agency coordination;

Using financial intelligence and financial footprints as a tool to detect networks of terrorists and their financiers;

Considering the establishment of a mechanism by which competent authorities can obtain relevant information, including but not limited to bank accounts, to facilitate the detection of terrorist assets, in compliance with international law, including international human rights law;

Calls upon all States to enhance the traceability and transparency of financial transactions, in compliance with international law, including international human rights law and humanitarian law, including through:

Fully exploiting the use of new and emerging financial and regulatory technologies to bolster financial inclusion, and to contribute to the effective implementation of AML/CFT measures;

ensuring that financial institutions, including within the same financial group, as well as designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs), can share information for the purposes of mitigating money laundering and terrorist financing risks and supplying domestic competent authorities with comprehensive information on criminal schemes, consistent with the home country requirements;

assessing the risks associated with the use of cash and bearer negotiable instruments, including the risk of illicit cross-border transportation of cash, as well as other financial products, including value stored and prepaid cards and informal value transfer system providers (including hawalas) and taking appropriate measures to address such risks;

assessing and addressing potential risks associated with virtual assets and as appropriate, the risks of new financial instruments, including but not limited to crowd-funding platforms, that may be abused for the purpose of terrorist financing and taking steps to ensure that providers of such assets are subject to AML/CFT obligations;

Welcomes in that regard FATF’s ongoing work concerning virtual assets and virtual assets service providers, including its October 2018 amendments to the FATF standards and statement on the Regulation of Virtual Assets, and encourages Member States to apply risk-based anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulations to virtual asset service providers, and to identify effective systems to conduct risk-based monitoring or supervision of virtual asset service providers;

Encourages competent national authorities, in particular financial intelligence units and intelligence services, to continue to establish effective partnerships with the private sector, including financial institutions, the Financial technology industry and internet and social media companies, in particular with regards to the evolution of trends, sources and methods of the financing of terrorism;

Recognizes the vital role played by non-profit organizations in national economies and social systems, calls on Member States to periodically conduct a risk assessment of its non-profit sector or update existing ones to determine the organizations vulnerable to terrorist financing and to inform the implementation of a risk based approach, encourages Member States to work cooperatively with the non-profit sector in order to prevent abuse of such organizations including front organizations by and for terrorists, while recalling that States must respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and recalls the relevant recommendations and existing guidance documents of the FATF in that regard, in particular its recommendation 8;

Urges States, when designing and applying measures to counter the financing of terrorism, to take into account the potential effect of those measures on exclusively humanitarian activities, including medical activities, that are carried out by impartial humanitarian actors in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law;

Encourages Member States to improve efforts and take decisive action to identify cases of trafficking in persons and in cultural property that finance terrorism with a view to holding those responsible accountable and to provide, as appropriate, the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team with relevant information pertaining to such cases;

Reiterates its call upon Member States to prevent terrorists from benefiting directly or indirectly from the payment of ransoms or from political concessions and encourages them to increase cooperation and information sharing to that end;

Urges States that have not already done so to adopt and implement the necessary legislative or other measures to establish as criminal offences under their domestic law the illegal manufacture, possession, stockpiling and trade of small arms and light weapons within their areas of jurisdiction in order to ensure that those engaged in such activities can be prosecuted;

Calls upon Member States to strengthen international cooperation to prevent and counter the financing of terrorism, including by:

ensuring the effective exchange of relevant financial intelligence through bilateral and multilateral mechanisms and ensuring that competent authorities are able to exercise their powers to respond to international cooperation requests effectively;

ensuring that their FIUs serve as the central agency for the receipt of suspicious transaction reports and other information relevant to money laundering, predicate offences and terrorist financing filed by reporting entities and that they actively use dedicated, secure and protected channels to disseminate, spontaneously or upon request, information and the results of its analysis to relevant competent authorities;

enhancing cross-border cooperation among and between customs and tax authorities, as well as improving the coordination of international police and customs operations;

improving the quality of the information shared internationally between financial intelligence units on the financing of FTFs, including FTF returnees and relocators, small cells, and individual terrorists on the activities of terrorist fundraisers, collectors and facilitators by fully implementing FATF standards in that regard;

Reaffirms that all States shall afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal investigations or criminal proceedings relating to the financing or support of terrorist acts;

Encourages Member States to help to build the capacity of other Member States, upon their request, to address the threat posed by the financing of terrorism;

Encourages Member States to make the best use of INTERPOL policing capabilities, such as relevant databases and analytical files, in order to prevent and counter the financing of terrorism;

Encourages Member States as well as the United Nations, in particular the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to continue conducting research and collecting information to better understand the nature and scope of the links that may exist between terrorism, in particular the financing of terrorism, and transnational organized crime;

Requests United Nations entities, particularly the UN Office on Counter Terrorism (OCT) and UNODC to continue to cooperate with Member States and to continue to provide, upon their request as well as on the basis of gaps in implementation and capacity identified by the CTED reports, in particular where they relate to FATF and FSRBs mutual evaluation reports, technical assistance and capacity-building to help them to fully implement their respective international obligations to prevent and combat the financing of terrorism;

Calls upon UNOCT, in close cooperation with UNODC and in consultation with CTED, the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team pursuant to resolutions 1526 (2004) and 2253 (2015) and other Global Compact entities as well as international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and other stakeholders, including the FSRBs, to enhance coordination with the aim of delivering integrated technical assistance on counter-terrorist financing measures, including assistance that will improve the capacity of Member States, upon their request, to implement this resolution;

Requests CTED, in accordance with resolution 2395, to strengthen its assessment process relating to countering the financing of terrorism, including through targeted and focused follow-up visits as complements to its comprehensive assessments and to provide, annually, on the basis of its reporting and in consultation with the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, to the UN Office on Counter Terrorism (UNOCT), through the Counterterrorism Committee, a thematic summary assessment of gaps identified and areas requiring more action to implement key counterterrorism financing provisions of relevant UN Security Council resolutions for the purpose of designing targeted technical assistance and capacity-building efforts and taking into account, as appropriate, FATF and FATF-Style Regional Bodies (FSRBs) mutual evaluation reports and to ensure that it allocates the necessary resources to carry out these tasks;

Requests the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Committee established pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015) to hold, within 12 months, a joint special meeting on terrorist financing threats and trends as well as on the implementation of the provisions of this resolution;

Requests CTED and the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team to prepare, ahead of the joint special meeting, a report on actions taken by Member States to disrupt terrorist financing and in this regard, and invites Member States to submit to them in writing, by the end of 2019, information on actions taken to disrupt terrorist financing;

Decides to remain seized of this matter.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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