In the Article 18.1 of the Law on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT law), the functions of the Financial Information Unit (FIU) are defined as follows:
- To receive, collect, and analyze information reported from reporting entities and as well as information in databases of relevant local and foreign institutions;
- If there are sufficient grounds to suspect that the given transaction had the purpose of money laundering or terrorism financing, then it shall be disseminated to competent law enforcement authorities and anti-terrorism agencies according to the regulation and to compile database on reports of suspicious, cash and non-cash transactions submitted to the competent authorities;
- To provide timely feedback and general information on suspicious transaction report analysis, common methods and indicators of suspicious transaction reports to provide support in reporting activities of reporting entities;
- To develop and provide methodology to monitor and detect suspicious transactions and examine information related to money laundering and terrorism financing and monitor its implementation by the reporting entities;
- To enhance public awareness to combat and prevent money laundering and terrorism financing;
- To inform the reporting entities about sanction list and organize the implementation thereof;
- To present consolidated statistics about supervision, to perform supervision and to request to perform supervision related to enforcement of AML/CFT law;
- To organize national risk assessment on AML/CFT, to draft national strategy based on risk assessment, and to present for consideration to the Cooperation Council;
- To organize measures to implement recommendations issued by international AML/CFT organizations;
- If there are grounds to suspect that an account of a customer of a reporting entity is used for money laundering and terrorism financing purposes, the FIU may monitor that particular account;
- If there are grounds to suspect that a transaction is used for the purposes of money laundering or terrorism financing, the Head of the Financial Information Unit may suspend the transaction up to 3 working days and a court shall extend the period if required.