In an article of 27 March 2020 the Egmont Group, the worldwide group of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), announced a AML-CFT handbook it has created together with the World Customs Organization (WCO). There is a public version of the handbook (pdf), that according to the name of the file is ‘sanitised’.

The handbook seems to concentrate on:

• Smuggling and concealment of currency (bulk cash smuggling – BCS), currency equivalents, gems and precious metals.
• Trade-based money laundering (TBML).
• Money or value transfer systems and alternative remittance systems.

There seems to be a lot of overlap with the many other guidelines, standards and other documents on AML and CFT.

It shows the necessity that the deluge of AML/CFT documents produced by national and international organisations are assessed independently on quality and that steps are taken to limit the production of handbooks, guidelines etcetera.