I thank Minister Le Drian of France for convening this important debate, as well as USG Mr. Voronkov, the President of the FATF and the distinguished anti-money laundering expert for their presentations.

Terror financing and money laundering is the fuel that fires the engine of terrorism. Therefore, to combat terrorism effectively, we must cut off the financial lifeline for terror and shut down its financiers.

Our region has witnessed the destabilizing and destructive role of terror financing. Palestinian terrorism continues to derail any hope or opportunity for peace. 

Hamas uses and abuses charitable organizations and humanitarian aid to fund its terror. 

The Palestinian Authority, as part of its campaign to incite Palestinians to commit acts of terror, often plays the role of financier. As part of its official policies, the Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars annually to ‘reward’ terrorists who have killed innocent Israeli civilians, rather than use these critical funds to support economic development, healthcare, social services, the judiciary, education and pave the way to a brighter future for the Palestinian people.  

When it comes to the Iranian regime, it would take an entire day to outline how the number one state sponsor of terrorism uses sophisticated methods and evades sanctions regimes to finance terrorism and its proxies worldwide. Its leading proxy, Hezbollah, is known to use and abuse international financial systems to illicitly fund its stockpiling of advanced weaponry and construction of terror attack tunnels that infiltrate Israel. Many delegations today noted Hezbollah’s abuse of otherwise legitimate business, including the pharmaceutical sector, to finance their terrorist activities throughout the region. 

Mr. President,

Israel is taking active and proactive steps to combat the unrelenting terror threats we face and the flow of funding that sustains them. These steps include establishing legislation, institutions, infrastructure and mechanisms carefully designed to address this alarming phenomenon.  

In 2016, Israel enacted an innovative and comprehensive new anti-terrorism law that adopts a holistic approach to fighting terrorism using legal tools. Beyond providing harsher sentencing for perpetrators of terrorism and enhanced due process safeguards, this law introduces something new: it criminalizes the circles of influence that provide material and other support to terrorists and terrorist acts.  Therefore, rather than targeting only the acts of terror themselves, this new law addresses the very pillars and foundations that support and finance terror. We hope this comprehensive anti-terrorism law can serve as a model worldwide.

Mr. President,

Beyond adopting domestic legislation, Israel has worked effectively to combat terror financing on the international front. Two years ago, Israel gained observer status with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). In December 2018, the FATF published a national evaluation report in which Israel received the highest possible ratings in the areas of combatting terror financing and the effective use of financial intelligence. 

The report praised Israel’s strong and extensive anti-terrorist financing institutions and positive national inter-agency coordination, particularly among Israel’s Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority, security authorities, the National Police, the Tax Authority and the Companies Authority.  

It also highlighted our highly effective use of financial intelligence, leading to a large number of successful investigations and prosecutions, as well as Israel’s active and effective confiscation of proceeds of terror financing. As the FATF President so kindly noted this morning in his opening remarks, Israel has recently shared its experience and best practices in this realm in a recent FATF workshop.

It noted that Israel properly and wisely approaches this issue holistically, looking not only at acts of terror financing themselves, but also their related activities, including border smuggling, the abuse of charities and non-profits by terrorists, trade-based financing of terror and vulnerable money transfer mechanisms.

As stated in the report, and I quote, “Israel effectively deprives terrorists, terrorist organizations, and terrorist financers of their assets and instrumentalities related to terror financing activities.” 

In the face of the Iranian regime’s state-sponsored terrorism worldwide, Israel has enacted comprehensive and effective counter-proliferation finance-targeted financial sanctions. This was also noted in our FATF evaluation. 

Overall, as the FATF report underlines, Israel implements targeted financial sanctions without delay, effectively implementing terrorist designations under UN Security Council Resolutions 1267, 1989 and 1988. 

Finally, Israel was an active participant at the International Conference to Combat the Financing of Daesh and Al-Qaeda that took place in Paris last April. We look forward to contributing in future meetings, including the upcoming meeting in Australia. 

Mr. President,

Like many other delegations that have already presented their remarks today, Israel encourages positive cooperation between the public and private sector globally to offer a united front against terror financing.  There must be early communication and the sharing of newly identified risks between national security authorities and financial institutions to effectively combat this phenomenon.

I would like to highlight a number of existing and emerging threats that, in our view, must be prioritized and addressed by the global community.

These include:

• The threat of countries and entities that have the ability to collect funds and provide       them to terrorist organizations;  

• The abuse of charitable organizations by terrorist organizations;  

• Self-financing terrorist organizations supported by seemingly legitimate business operations; 

• The smuggling of funds, goods and valuables through border crossings; and  

• The abuse of emerging technologies to finance terrorism including the use of electronic wallets and virtual assets 

Mr. President,

I am here today to share Israel’s knowledge of counterterrorism – an expertise we have unfortunately gained due to decades of terrorism against our people.  We hope to provide the UN, counterterrorism bodies and fellow peace-seeking nations with best practices, practical solutions, and cutting edge technologies, so that together we can overcome this evil force.

Thank you.