FATF ¦ R.39 Ex­tra­di­tion

Recommendation 39: Why Effective Extradition is Critical to Fighting Financial Crime

One of the most powerful tools in the fight against financial crime is the ability of countries to hand over suspects and convicted persons to each other quickly and fairly. Recommendation 39 focuses on extradition in the context of money laundering and terrorist financing. It sets out what countries must do to avoid becoming safe havens for criminals who move across borders to escape justice, especially those involved in terrorism and the financial flows that sustain it. At its core, Recommendation 39 is about turning legal commitments into practical, workable extradition systems that are fast, fair, and resistant to abuse. For financial crime professionals, understanding these requirements is essential, because the quality of a country’s extradition framework often determines whether complex transnational cases succeed or stall.

Making Money Laundering And Terrorist Financing Extraditable Offences

The first pillar of Recommendation 39 is straightforward but crucial: money laundering and terrorist financing must be extraditable offences. This means:

• National law must explicitly allow extradition for these crimes, not just for the underlying predicate offences.
• Terrorist acts and participation in terrorist organisations, as well as the financing of such acts or organisations, must all be covered.

Without this, a country risks becoming a shelter for individuals who use its legal gaps to avoid facing charges abroad. From a practical perspective, prosecutors and financial intelligence units depend on extradition powers to secure the presence of key suspects, especially when the laundering scheme spans multiple jurisdictions or when terrorist financiers exploit cross-border networks.

Clear And Efficient Extradition Procedures

It is not enough for the offences to be extraditable on paper. Recommendation 39 stresses that countries need clear, efficient processes for executing extradition requests without undue delay. This includes:

• well-defined procedures and timelines, so requests do not languish in bureaucratic limbo;
• prioritisation mechanisms for serious cases, particularly those involving terrorism or large-scale money laundering;
• a functioning case management system to track the progress of each request.

A robust case management system is particularly important in financial crime cases. These often involve multiple defendants, parallel investigations, mutual legal assistance requests, asset tracing, and freezing orders. If extradition is handled through ad-hoc or manual tracking, delays and errors are almost inevitable. For compliance professionals and investigators, such delays can mean dissipated funds, compromised evidence, or even heightened risk to public safety.

Bastian Schwind-Wagner _Follow

"Recommendation 39 is a practical blueprint for making sure financial criminals and terrorist financiers cannot hide behind borders. It pushes countries to make extradition fast, fair, and focused on the underlying conduct rather than technical differences in law.

For financial crime professionals, understanding Recommendation 39 is essential to evaluating cross-border risk and planning effective enforcement strategies. Where extradition works well, complex international cases become achievable; where it fails, safe havens for serious offenders quickly emerge."

Avoiding Unreasonable Restrictions And Safe Havens

Recommendation 39 explicitly warns against unreasonable or unduly restrictive conditions on extradition. While countries may legitimately protect human rights and due process, they should not use overly strict conditions to effectively block extradition in financial crime cases. Examples of problematic restrictions might include:

• overly rigid evidentiary thresholds that go beyond international norms;
• excessive political approvals that make the process unpredictable or subject to political interference;
• broad, vague grounds for refusal that can be invoked inconsistently.

The objective is to prevent countries from becoming safe havens for individuals charged with terrorist financing, terrorist acts, or involvement in terrorist organisations. If one jurisdiction routinely refuses to extradite such suspects on technicalities or political grounds, it undermines the entire international financial crime framework and risks reputational damage, sanctions, or increased scrutiny from bodies like the FATF and regional bodies.

Building An Adequate Legal Framework For Extradition

A sound extradition system rests on a solid legal framework. Recommendation 39 requires that countries put in place laws and regulations that clearly set out:

• the grounds on which extradition can be requested and granted;
• the procedural safeguards for the person sought, including access to legal representation and judicial review;
• the interaction between extradition treaties, domestic law, and international conventions.

For financial crime, this legal framework should be aligned with the broader anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regime. That means harmonising definitions of offences, ensuring that freezing and confiscation measures can operate alongside extradition, and linking extradition procedures with mutual legal assistance and asset recovery mechanisms.

Extraditing Nationals Or Prosecuting Them At Home

A sensitive issue in extradition is what to do when the person sought is a national of the requested country. Some states do not extradite their own nationals, often for constitutional reasons. Recommendation 39 acknowledges this, but imposes a clear alternative:

• If a country will not extradite its nationals solely on the grounds of nationality, it must, at the request of the other country, submit the case to its own competent authorities for prosecution.
• This must be done without undue delay, and the case must be treated in the same way as any other serious domestic offence.

For financial crime, this requirement is vital. Without it, citizens could launder money or finance terrorism abroad and then return home to avoid accountability. The standard requires genuine prosecution efforts, rather than mere token investigations. The requesting and requested countries are expected to cooperate on evidence and procedural issues to ensure that the domestic prosecution is effective and not merely symbolic.

Dual Criminality: Focusing On Conduct, Not Labels

Many extradition systems require dual criminality, meaning the conduct must be criminal in both the requesting and requested states. Recommendation 39 adopts a pragmatic interpretation of this requirement:

• Dual criminality is satisfied if both countries criminalise the conduct underlying the offence, even if the offence falls into different legal categories or is described using different terminology.

This is particularly important for financial crime, where legal definitions and offence titles vary widely across jurisdictions. For example, one country might have a specific statute for “terrorist financing”, while another covers the same conduct under a broader “support to terrorist organisations” provision. Focusing on the conduct — rather than matching statutes word-for-word — prevents technical discrepancies from blocking extradition in serious cases.

Simplified And Fast-Track Extradition Mechanisms

To speed up the process further, Recommendation 39 encourages simplified extradition mechanisms, provided they are consistent with fundamental domestic legal principles. These can include:

• direct transmission of requests for provisional arrest between competent authorities, rather than routing everything through diplomatic channels;
• extradition based only on arrest warrants or judgments, without demanding full dossiers at the initial stage;
• simplified extradition for persons who consent and waive full formal proceedings.

For financial crime cases, particularly where suspects may flee or assets can be moved quickly, these simplified tools can be decisive. The ability to obtain a provisional arrest on the basis of a warrant buys time for investigators and prosecutors to assemble the full case while ensuring the suspect does not disappear.

Resourcing And Integrity Of Extradition Authorities

Even the best laws and procedures will fail if the institutions responsible for extradition are weak or under-resourced. Recommendation 39 stresses that:

• authorities handling extradition must have adequate financial, human, and technical resources;
• staff must maintain high professional standards, including strict confidentiality;
• personnel should be of high integrity and appropriately skilled.

In practice, this means specialised extradition units, training on international cooperation and AML/CFT issues, secure case management systems, and close coordination with prosecutors, FIUs, police, and central authorities for mutual legal assistance. Given the sensitivity of financial crime cases — especially those touching on terrorism — protecting sensitive financial intelligence and ensuring there are no leaks or corrupt interference is critical.

What This Means For Financial Crime Professionals

For investigators, compliance officers, and legal teams working in the financial crime space, Recommendation 39 has several practical implications:

• Risk assessment: Countries with slow, opaque, or politicised extradition systems may be more attractive to criminals. This can feed into jurisdiction risk ratings and influence decisions about correspondent banking, cross-border partnerships, or customer onboarding.
• Case strategy: In cross-border money laundering or terrorist financing cases, the feasibility and speed of extradition will shape investigative strategies, charging decisions, and the timing of public actions such as arrests and asset freezes.
• Policy and advocacy: In-house and external experts may need to engage with policymakers to improve extradition laws and practice, especially where gaps are identified during FATF mutual evaluations or international assessments.

Conclusion: Extradition As A Cornerstone Of Global AML/CFT Efforts

Recommendation 39 highlights that effective extradition is not a peripheral issue; it is central to the credibility and effectiveness of the global response to money laundering and terrorist financing. By ensuring that these offences are extraditable, building clear and efficient procedures, avoiding unreasonable barriers, and resourcing competent authorities properly, countries reduce the space in which financial criminals and terrorist financiers can operate.

In an era where financial flows and criminal networks move quickly across borders, a strong, practical extradition framework is one of the essential safeguards that prevents national borders from becoming shields for impunity.

Dive deeper

• FATF ¦ The FATF Recommendations ¦ Link
• FATF ¦ Luxembourg’s measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing ¦ Link