Since its establishment in 1997 the APG has been growing in membership.  In 1997 there were 13 members. As at the end of 2008, 39 member jurisdictions make up the APG making it the largest FATF-style regional body in the world. In addition, seven members of the APG are also members of the Financial Action Task Force, namely: Australia; Canada; Hong Kong, China; Japan; New Zealand; Singapore; and the United States; and two members have applied for FATF membership - Korea and India. 

The past 11 years has seen a growing recognition by jurisdictions within the APG region that money laundering and terrorist financing are serious crimes requiring not only a domestic response but a coordinated international and regional solution.

In June 1998, the United Nations General Assembly in its Political Declaration and Action Plan Against Money Laundering urged all states to apply the following principles by 2003:

1. Establishment of a legislative framework to criminalise the laundering of money derived from serious crimes in order to provide for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of the crime of money-laundering;
2. Identification, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of crime; and
3. Establishment of an effective financial and regulatory regime to deny criminals and their illicit funds access to national and international financial systems, thus preserving the integrity of financial systems worldwide and ensuring compliance with laws and other regulations against money-laundering through.

Since this Declaration was issued, a number of other UN instruments, including the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the UN Convention Against Corruption have added greater detail to the mechanisms required by countries in relation to money laundering.  

With respect to terrorist financing, in addition to the 1999 UN Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Financing, some significant UN Security Council Resolutions have been issued since 1997, in particular, UN Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373.  Those Resolutions, as well as the Convention, require countries to implement significant measures to criminalize terrorist financing, freeze terrorist funds and other property and impose sanctions against UN designated terrorist entities as well as terrorist entities of concern outside the UN list.   

While these UN intruments are no doubt important, it is the international standards issued by the FATF which remain the key measures for APG jurisdictions to implement as part of their legal, financial and law enforcement strategies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

In 1997 very few APG members had anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing legislation and other measures in place. Now, almost 12 years after its formation, most APG members have laws, regulations, administrative measures and other programmes designed to counter these threats.

For information on each member’s domestic laws and measures please click on the buttons to the left of this screen.

The document below shows the variety of other organisations to which APG members belong.