FIU-IND is a central national agency responsible for receiving, processing and analysing information related to suspect financial transactions, which reports directly to the Economic Intelligence Council (EIC) headed by the Union finance minister.

The decision is taken during a nine-member delegation of FIU-Qatar visited FIU-IND on November 4-5 in its New Delhi office, a finance ministry statement said on Tuesday. FIU-Ind head Vivek Aggarwal received the delegation led by Sheikh Ahmed Al Thani, the head of FIU-Qatar.

“The visit marked a significant step in strengthening the relations between the two FIUs and their commitment to assist each other in fighting the menace of money laundering and financing of terrorism,” the statement said.

During the visit, Aggarwal and his Qatari counterpart discussed about current practices as well as possible areas of future collaboration between the two organisations, it said.

They discussed areas such as the IT systems used by respective jurisdiction, public-private-partnership initiative of FIU-IND, private-private partnership for alliance of reporting entities in India, strategic analysis and various tools used by the two FIUs as well as FIU-IND’s experience in area of virtual digital assets service providers (VDA-SPs), it said. “Further, methods of effective information exchange were also discussed and deliberated upon,” it added.

“FIU-Qatar highly appreciated the IT system (FINNET 2.0) used by FIU-IND and mentioned that it is one of the most sophisticated systems used by any FIU,” the statement said.

FIU-Qatar and FIU-IND have cooperated with each other over the years, through the informal information exchange on offences related to money laundering, financing of terrorism. Both the FIUs are members of Egmont Group and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and have been actively associated with various initiatives taken by these international organisations, it said.

Apart from the above, both FIUs, in order to bolster cooperation, have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding on information exchange in relation to money laundering, financing of terrorism and associated predicate offence in June 2016.