United States, Saudi Arabia establish center to target terrorist financing networks

Officials with the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recently signed an agreement to establish a joint Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), which seeks to address new and evolving threats related to extremist financing.

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said the center will enhance existing tools and cooperation with partners in the Gulf to forcefully address evolving threats and offer vast expertise in the United States’ Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

“We will co-chair the TFTC with Saudi Arabia, and will work collaboratively with the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council to counter these global terror networks,” Mnuchin said.

The center will seek to address three specific areas related to terrorist financing, including identifying and sharing information regarding terrorist financial networks, coordinating joint disruptive efforts, and offering support to countries in the region that need assistance in building capacity to counter terrorist finance threats.

The Department of the Treasury said in a statement that the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other strategic partners in the Gulf are confronting evolving networks including ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Taliban, and the Haqqani Network.

Additional signatories to the memorandum of understanding included Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.