The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), also known by its French name, Groupe d'action financière (GAFI), is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1989 on the initiative of the G7 to develop policies to combat money laundering and to maintain certain interest.

[4] The objectives of FATF are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

FATF is a "policy-making body" that works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas.

[10] This in turn has motivated domestic economic and political actors in the listed countries to pressure their governments to introduce regulations compliant with the FATF.

This guidance offers recommendations on how member jurisdictions should regulate cryptocurrency businesses, placing anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations on VAs and VASPs.

This was followed by the International Best Practices Combating the Abuse of Non-Profit Organisations in 2002, released one month before the U.S. Department of Treasury's Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines, and the Interpretive Note for SR VIII in 2006.

This can have detrimental effects on a country's national security through increasing risks of money laundering and financing of terrorism as well as wastage due to the implementation of inappropriate regulatory measures.

The objective is to increase mitigation strategies that would enable scarce resources in fighting money laundering and terrorism financing threats.

Typically, this lack of cooperation manifested itself as an unwillingness or inability (frequently, a legal inability) to provide foreign law enforcement officials with information relating to bank account and brokerage records, and customer identification and beneficial owner information relating to such bank and brokerage accounts, shell corporations, and other financial vehicles commonly used in money laundering.

[34] Countries and territories in the grey list are Algeria, Angola, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Lebanon, Mali, Monaco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen.

[36] The observer organisations include:[36] The FATF has been characterized as effective in shifting laws and regulations to combat illicit financial flows.

FATF incentivizes stricter regulations through its public noncomplier list, which leads financial institutions to shift resources and services away from the countries on the blacklist.

This in turn motivates domestic economic and political actors in the listed countries to pressure their governments to introduce regulations that are compliant with the FATF.

The unintended consequences of the misinterpretation of FATF Recommendation 8 on non-profit organisations have impacted NGOs, particularly those in the Global South extending well beyond civil society located in Middle Eastern and terror-ridden countries.

[38] In 2023, FATF released new guidance on interpretation of Recommendation 8 relating to non-profits, to better prevent misuse of its standards to restrict legitimate civil society operations.

Pol contends that industry and policymakers consistently ignore this, instead evaluating the policies based on largely irrelevant success metrics.