The re-organization of the FATF as an international legal person and the promises and limits to accountability

The international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regulatory regime, spearheaded by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), increasingly impacts individuals, corporations and states across the world. This chapter discusses the linkage between debates on (international) legal personhood and accountability of informal expert bodies such as the FATF. It seeks to answer the question whether formalizing the legal personality of the FATF goes some distance in enhancing its accountability. The imagery of legal invisibility or ‘non-existence’ of an entity often evokes the feeling that the entity is legally unaccountable, or, at least, is too elusive to be held meaningfully accountable. This perception animates formalistic arguments for the granting of (international) legal personhood. In other words, incorporating informal international bodies into formal legal personhood is perceived as advantageous for legal accountability. The chapter analyzes a number of possibilities under which the move towards (international) legal personality of the FATF could have both positive and negative contributions to the organization's accountability.