Criminals often try to disguise the identity, original ownership, and destination of money that they have obtained through criminal conduct, with the intention of making it seem that the proceeds have come from a legitimate source. The overall scheme of this process returns the “clean” money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.
On the other hand, but very often closely related, Terrorism Financing refers to the provision of funds or providing financial support to individual terrorists or even terrorist groups/organisations, whether at a local or international level. Various countries have implemented different measures to counter terrorism financing often as part of their money laundering laws. At an EU level, through the implementation of EU wide directives, case in point the 4th AMLD, efforts are aimed at ensuring that all EU members are aligned with very similar AML/CFT laws, with the scope of ensuring consistency, whilst at the same time focusing all efforts towards making the EU a safer place to conduct business.
Some countries and multinational organisations have created a list of organisations that they regard as terrorist organisations, even though there is no consistency as to which organisations are designated as being terrorist by each country. The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering has made recommendations to members relating to CFT. It has created a Blacklist and Greylist of countries that have not taken adequate CFT action.
Overall, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) refers to all the actions various countries take on a regular basis, aimed at prevent money laundering, whilst Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) involves investigating, analyzing, deterring, and preventing sources of funding for activities intended to achieve political, religious, ideological or other actions considered to be terroristic in nature. All these actions are predominantly lead by Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), and are at times supported by other supervisory authorities. In Malta the FIAU is the lead authority, and the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA), and Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) and supervisory authorities assisting the FIAU in the areas of gaming/gambling and financial services respectively.