A new international forum to share counter-terrorism financing (CTF) information with three other jurisdictions has been set up by the Royal Gibraltar Police.

The forum will see Gibraltar share expertise with the self-governing British dependencies Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey in a bid to “stay ahead of terrorist financing trends”. This follows criticism of Gibraltar’s approach to CTF by watchdog Moneyval last year

Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Tunbridge of RGP, who is leading the initiative said the four jurisdictions have similar legal frameworks and financial centres and would therefore benefit from specialist officers sharing their experiences.

He said: “This is a challenging and ever-developing area of policing where keeping in step with developments and trends can mean the difference between life and death.”

“Gibraltar continues to develop its understanding of the risk it faces to its financial sectors being used to fund terrorism and sees this type of partnership working as assisting the fight against terror to build a safer world community.”

In a Mutual Evaluation Report for Gibraltar last year, Moneyval said: “The jurisdiction’s overall understanding of the money laundering and financing of terrorism risks is affected by several shortcomings related to the National Risk Assessment and in particular by insufficient analysis of the cross-border threat which Gibraltar faces as an international financial centre.

It also flagged the “relative lack of suspicious transactions reports related to the financing of terrorism” as a concern.

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