The Financial Action Task Force entrapped within hypocrisy and rhetoric: using India as a case study

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the FATF and its relationship with other normative frameworks (security, human rights), and actors (states, private institutions, civil society). It explains how the FATF, was appropriated willingly by states, beyond the peer-pressure, or financial repercussions explanations. It finds that one of these reasons was that states could use them to their own benefit through ‘rhetorical adaptation’. At the same time, it explains that the FATF’s frameworks go beyond merely being ‘vague and broad’; they are erroneous in terms of their methodology and contradict certain human rights such as the freedom of association, and the rights to due procedure. To illustrate this, it takes the case of India which has been coerced by the FATF to amend its security legislations to comply with its standards, but which has also instrumentally used these standards against minorities and political dissenters – particularly those that have organized themselves into some form of association (a segment specifically identified by the FATF as being vulnerable to money laundering and financing terrorism). Despite drawing attention to these issues, the FATF continues to operate with empty promises, and the standards continue to be supported and endorsed by the UN mechanisms, in what would otherwise be ‘hypocrisy’. This is because the FATF and the UN too, operate within institutional and material limitations – in this case, that its primary members are states or (in fact) representatives of the states, for whom security and political expediency stand at the forefront. Under these circumstances, the organizational doublespeak is but necessary.