PM Narendra Modi to inaugurate ‘No Money for Terror’ global meet on Nov 18

According to the agenda prepared for the NMFT conference, there will be four sessions spread over two days with representatives of 75 countries

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the third global ‘no money for terror’ NMFT conference in the national Capital on Friday, where representatives of 75 countries will discuss various issues pertaining to terrorism and terrorist financing, people familiar with the development said on Tuesday.

The outcome of the NMFT conference is expected to be aligned with protecting communities from terrorism. (HT file photo)

The third ministerial conference on counter-terrorism financing – two previous such meets were held in France and Australia in 2018 and 2019, respectively – is being organised by India at Taj Palace hotel on November 18-19 to discuss global trends in terrorism and terrorist financing, use of formal and informal channels of funds for terrorism, emerging technologies and terrorist financing and requisite international co-operation to address challenges in combating terrorist financing, said an officer, who didn’t want to be named.

Union home minister Amit Shah will attend the concluding session of the conference on Saturday.

According to the agenda prepared for the NMFT conference, there will be four sessions spread over two days in which representatives of 75 countries will discuss - “global trends in terrorism and terrorist financing”; “use of formal and informal channels of funds for terrorism”; “emerging technologies and terrorist financing” and “international cooperation to address challenges in combating terrorist financing”.

Issues such as potential of global terrorist organisations to expand, nexus between terrorists and organised crimes, use of hawala for funding, virtual assets, crowd funding platforms, dark web among others will be discussed during the four sessions, said a second officer, who also didn’t want to be named.

“The 3rd Conference intends to include discussions on technical, legal, regulatory and cooperation aspects of all facets of terrorism financing, and attempt to set the pace for similarly high level official and political deliberations, focused on countering terror financing,” said the first officer cited above.

“The outcome of the NMFT conference is expected to be aligned with protecting communities from terrorism by enhancing global cooperation and building capacity to deny funds to terrorists and access to permissive jurisdictions to operate. India acknowledges the essential role of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in setting global standards and expects this conference to complement its work and that of its global network of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) style regional bodies,” he said.

While inaugurating the 90th Interpol General Assembly in Delhi last month, PM Modi had said that financial crimes and terrorism were linked through “dirty money”, and urged Interpol to facilitate wider global cooperation to deal with the dual threat, rather than letting these issues be tackled at the local level.