The Governor of Qatar Central Bank, H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud Al Thani
DOHA: Qatar hopes to soon enforce a law establishing a central agency that would regulate and monitor the activities of charitable bodies and donations made for charity.
The aim is to ensure that charitable funds are not routed to finance terrorism, the head of the banking regulator, Qatar Central Bank, announced while opening a workshop here yesterday.
QCB Governor, H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud Al Thani, said that Qatar had taken a number of measures to combat the financing of terrorism, including requiring banks to freeze the assets of suspected terrorists and terror organisations that are on the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee’s Consolidated List.
In 2002, Qatar set up a national panel to review the UN Consolidated List and recommended action against suspected individuals and entities.
As a precaution, Qatar doesn’t allow people other than citizens, legal foreign residents and nationals of other GCC states to open a bank account here. All accounts must be opened in person.
The three-day regional workshop that kicked off yesterday is on preventing the use of non-profit organisations to finance terrorism.
Addressing the workshop, Mike Smith, Executive Director of the UN Counterterrorism Committee, criticised Middle Eastern countries, saying most of them were not taking enough measures to prevent the use of non-profit bodies for financing terrorism.
Non-profit organisations are an important part of the economic wheel as a mind-boggling $2.3 trillion worth of funds are managed and circulated by them annually worldwide. If this sum is handed to a country, it would become the seventh largest economy in the world, said Smith.
These non-profit bodies employ 56 million people worldwide and need protection in order to thrive, since they play a very dynamic social role.
Speaking of the workshop, Smith said the initiative began in London in 2011, and the next meeting of expert groups on the issue (of preventing the use of non-profit bodies for financing terror) will be held in New York after two months.
THE PENINSULA
