Country Reports on Terrorism 2012

the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) deficiencies. To address those deficiencies, it has
developed an action plan with the FATF.
As part of its broader efforts to combat terrorist financing and comply with the FATF
recommendations, and after a review of its 2005 AML/CFT legislation, Algeria adopted a new
law in 2012 on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. The 2012 law entered
into force on December 14, and requires banks and other financial institutions to improve
tracking and record keeping. The law also strengthens the obligations of financial regulators to
monitor and ensure that banks and financial institutions cooperate with law enforcement
authorities on investigations and prosecutions. Finally, the law authorizes judges to freeze or
seize funds belonging to terrorist organizations. This legislation addresses prior concerns that
Algeria had no specific legislation to freeze terrorist assets, although Algeria maintained that its
ratification of international terrorist financing conventions gave it the authority to do so. Algeria
worked throughout 2012 to improve its Financial Intelligence Unit’s analytical and resource
capacity, strengthen its authority, and increase its resources.
Algeria has a cash-based economy and a vast informal sector that poses challenges to monitoring
and regulating money and value transfer services. Although the Algerian government,
particularly the Central Bank, has mechanisms in place to control and collect data on wire
transfers – and although Algeria requires the collection of wire transfer data – it is unclear
whether legal requirements were consistently enforced. The Algerian government monitors NGO
activities and financing. A 2012 law on associations included new provisions to limit foreign
funding to local NGOs. The Central Bank is responsible for disseminating information about UN
lists of designated terrorists or terrorist entities to financial institutions.
For further information on money laundering and financial crimes, we refer you to the 2013
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Volume 2, Money Laundering and
Financial Crimes: http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/index.htm.
Regional and International Cooperation: Algeria is a founding member of the GCTF and cochairs
the group’s Sahel Working Group, in which capacity it championed the development of
the Algiers Memorandum on Good Practices on Preventing and Denying the Benefits of
Kidnapping for Ransom by Terrorists.
Regional counterterrorism cooperation remained challenging, particularly in the wake of the
conflicts in neighboring northern Mali and Libya. Algeria is actively combating AQIM within its
borders, but its long-standing policy of non-intervention has limited its involvement in
neighboring northern Mali, where several AQIM battalions collaborated with the tribal and
violent Islamist extremists that seized the northern half of Mali in spring 2012. Algeria has
dramatically increased border security and reportedly sent thousands of additional security forces
to reinforce the border and reduce weapons smuggling. Nonetheless, the long, porous borders
remain a persistent security challenge.
In September 2010, Algeria in collaboration with southern neighbors Mali, Mauritania, and
Niger, formed the Comite d’ État-Major Opérationnel Conjoint (CEMOC). While the role of the
CEMOC military command center (based in the southern Algerian city of Tamanrasset) in
regional security has been limited, conferences among the CEMOC Joint Chiefs of Staff have
resulted in additional coordination with regard to border security strategies.
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