Membership, Support, and Compliance Working Group (MSCWG)
The MSCWG ensures that the Egmont Group’s high standards and membership criteria are applied to both new members and existing member FIUs.
The Egmont Group’s governing body, the Heads of FIU, mandated the MSCWG to assess whether applicant FIUs fulfill the Egmont Group’s legal and operational membership criteria.
Additionally, the MSCWG has the mandate of maintaining these high standards among Egmont Group members, who hold and exchange highly-sensitive information to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing by implementing the Support and Compliance Process (SCP).
Key Elements of the MSCWG's Mandate
Projects
Chair and Vice-Chairs
Key Elements of the MSCWG'S Mandate
- Oversee the membership application procedures by screening candidate FIUs from an operational and legal perspective and recommending new members to the HoFIU if they meet Egmont membership criteria.
- Please visit our Egmont Group Membership Application page for more information about becoming an Egmont Group member.
- Implement the Support and Compliance Process and make recommendations to the Egmont Committee and/or HoFIU on compliance matters.
- Monitor FATF/FSRB/IMF/WB mutual evaluations.
- Support member FIUs before facing compliance challenges, in cooperation with other Egmont Group bodies as needed.
- Conduct reviews as requested by the Egmont Committee.
- Confirm the status of FIUs that have undergone significant changes to establish that they still meet the Egmont Group criteria.
MSCWG Projects
Current MSCWG Projects
- Conduct reviews and implement the different steps related to the Support and Compliance Process triggers, considering the support mechanism first.
- Review and update the current procedures under the MSCWG to properly conduct its mandate regarding the Support and Compliance Process and the status of FIUs after changes.
- Continue enhancing the current Pool of Experts, considering a regional approach to assist with the Support & Compliance Process and membership issues.
- Continue vetting and screening candidate FIUs based on the current membership application procedures and Egmont Group membership criteria to determine and ensure that the legal and operational requirements to become Egmont Group members are fulfilled.
- Review and update the current membership application procedures and related documents to properly conduct this task.
- Conduct reviews and implement the different steps related to the Support and Compliance Process triggers, considering the support mechanism first.
- Review and update the current procedures under the MSCWG to properly conduct its mandate regarding the Support and Compliance Process and the status of FIUs after changes.
- Continue enhancing the current Pool of Experts, considering a regional approach to assist with the Support and Compliance Process and membership issues.
- Continue vetting and screening candidate FIUs based on the current membership application procedures and Egmont Group membership criteria to determine and ensure that the legal and operational requirements to become Egmont Group members are fulfilled.
Chair and Vice-Chairs
Working Group Chair
Name
Fuad Aliyev, FMS-Azerbaijan
Dr. Fuad Aliyev is the International Cooperation Director at the Financial Monitoring Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan and has worked at the FIU since 2011. He also serves as Executive Secretary of the interagency AML/CFT Coordination Council, a ML/TF National Risk Assessment coordinator, and Chair of Other Financial Institutions’ sub-working groups under the inter-agency NRA Working Group in Azerbaijan.
Dr. Aliyev has been a certified Council of Europe MONEYVAL Committee AML/CFT evaluator since 2016, a certified FATF-TREIN trainer since 2022, and passed CAMS anti-money laundering specialist certification in 2013. In addition, he was a MONEYVAL evaluator of IO1 & IO2 for North Macedonia in 2022 and 2023 and a FATF ICRG lead reviewer of IO8 for the Bulgaria POPR and Albania action plan, IO4 for the Malta POPR in 2021, and IO3 & IO6 for the Isle of Man POPR. Dr. Aliyev contributed on behalf of MONEYVAL as an external reviewer of the draft EAG MER of Tajikistan in 2018 and was a MONEYVAL expert at the FATF Policy Development Group meeting in May 2019.
Dr. Aliyev has a Ph.D. in Economics and was a Fulbright Scholar of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (USA) and a US Department of State Hubert Humphrey Fellow in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
In the Egmont Group, he has been an active member of the Membership, Support, and Compliance Working Group (MSCWG) since 2019, leading the Group as Vice-Chair since January 2020 before being selected as Working Group Chair in July 2023. Dr. Aliyev also contributed to the activities of the Training Working Group in 2013 and the Policy and Procedures Working Group in 2016.
As the MSCWG Chair, Dr. Aliyev aims to introduce a more effective Support and Compliance Process, create incentives for more active member involvement, expand geographic representation in the Egmont Group, and focus on the MSCWG mandate’s support element.
Working Group
Vice-Chairs
- Tarek Zahran – SIC-Lebanon
- Vince O’Brien – FIU United Kingdom
