Policy paper

G7 Interior and Security Senior Officials' meeting chair's summary, 8 December 2021

Published 21 December 2021

Senior Officials Meeting: Crimes that Affect the Environment.

Money Laundering Risks in the Illegal Wildlife Trade.

This is a chair’s summary statement from a meeting of G7 senior officials and representatives of INTERPOL on 8 December 2021, as part of the UK’s G7 Presidency.

Background

This year G7 Leaders and Interior Ministers recognised the need to step up efforts to counter crimes that affect the environment. It is vital, now more than ever, that we disrupt transnational criminal networks from exploiting natural resources for profit.

In the 2030 Nature Compact, G7 Leaders tasked relevant Ministers to respond as appropriate to the proposed actions identified in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 2020 report on money laundering risks relating to the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT). They were to update on progress at the Interior Ministers meeting in September 2021.

Important discussions on the situation in Afghanistan meant that the Ministerial meeting agenda was revised and a discussion on illicit finance in the IWT was not possible. Therefore, on 8 December G7 Senior Officials met to discuss the ways in which the G7 countries have responded to the FATF report and how to work together to respond more effectively in future.

Discussion

Expert Speakers

The G7 welcomed presentations from the FATF President, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit. Key issues discussed included:

• the need for collaboration between government, the private sector and civil society
• the need for all countries to conduct more financial investigations in connection with IWT and for higher capacity countries to support lower capacity countries to conduct financial investigations
• a recognition that whilst G7 countries have effective anti-money laundering legislation, there remain intelligence gaps in national assessments
• the importance of training, funding, and infrastructure to support effective financial investigations
• the links with wider organised crimes
• operational responses, including cyber enabled IWT, and the need for close regional collaboration.

G7 Response

The G7 welcomed the focus given to this issue by the UK Presidency and accepted the need to do more to ensure an effective domestic and international response. Officials reflected on:

• good progress across countries on the 2020 FATF report, but the need to go further
• public awareness of this crime type being low and needing to be raised
• linkages between IWT and other types of crime, including broader types of environmental crime, but also corruption, people trafficking, drug trafficking and other types of serious organised crime.
• an emphasis on the importance of co-operation to address the threat across jurisdictions, and with inter-agency co-ordination as well as with the financial sector
• the need to build and refresh intelligence analysis of the threat

Next Steps

We look forward to continuing to engage on this important agenda under the upcoming German Presidency of the G7, through other multilateral fora, such as the FATF and UN Office on Drugs and Crime and with international partners including INTERPOL.