Within FATF circles, Richard Chalmers is fondly known as Mr. Recommendation, and Team CFATF joined colleagues within the global Anti Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) network in wishing him farewell and best wishes for the future on the occasion his final FATF Plenary Meeting as a member of the United Kingdom delegation in Paris last month.

Richard started attending FATF meetings some fifteen years ago to help bring some offshore expertise into the FATF Non Co-operative Countries and Territories (NCCT) exercise and worked with the Americas NCCT Review Group.

About that time he also started attending CFATF Plenary and Ministerial meetings, representing the United Kingdom and over the years has attended most, but not quite all the CFATF meetings.

Later on he became involved with the chairing of Working Group on Evaluations and Implementation (WGEI)/Evaluations and Compliance Group (/ECG) in 2005, and also took on the chair of the Africa/Middle East Regional Review Group in 2009.

Richard has been intimately involved with the development of the FATF Recommendations and through his extensive knowledge and expertise he has contributed to the development of CFATF’s Mutual Evaluation process, through his participation in the discussions on CFATF Mutual Evaluation and Follow up Reports and participated in training workshops for CFATF Members on the FATF Recommendations and Methodology in Nicaragua and El Salvador during 2012 and 2013 respectively.

Madam Chair Maynard Gibson and the rest of the CFATF family of nations, extend their thanks  to Richard for all his support for the CFATF over the years, wish him well on his retirement   and welcome his interest in working with the CFATF in the future.