Mr Marshall Billingslea, Assistant Secretary for Anti-Terrorism Financing at the U.S. Treasury Department visited Ulaanbaatar last week. This comes after Mongolia was added to the grey list of the anti-money-laundering organization FATF, in October. The inclusion, doubtless, raised many eyebrows as peace-loving Mongolia has no history of extremism or fostering radical sympathies; rather the inclusion came as a result of the lack of financial transparency and, alleged corruption by senior officials.

In Ulaanbaatar, Mr Billingslea has held discussions with D.Tsogtbaatar, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ch.Khurelbaatar, Minister of Finance and Ts.Nyamdorj, Minister of Justice over building a consistent framework against terrorism financing and money laundering.

He noted that U.S. officials are actively cooperating with Mongolia in order to get the country off the FATF grey list, where it has been placed alongside N.Korea, Iraq and other rogue states. Over the last eight months, many U.S. officials have visited Mongolia.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is on a mission to help safeguard the international financial system and strengthen financial sectors across the globe that illicit actors aggressively seek to exploit.