The world body leading the fight against money laundering said it had agreed new rules to sharpen its attack on dirty money and terror finance, banning "underground" banks and boosting surveillance of casinos.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said it had revised its so-called 40 Recommendations, a set of world standards for financial regulators, to reflect new dangers from money laundering by criminal and terror groups.
"Really important changes have been laid down in these revisions that will form the new FATF law for the next five years," FATF president Jochen Sanio told a news conference after a four-day meeting hosted by Germany.
"This is a quantum leap forward." The revised standards, binding for FATF's 31 member states, seek tougher checks on customers in high-risk business areas such as correspondent banking, which involves one bank providing services to another bank to move funds across borders, a frequent route for illicit cash.
Casinos, real estate agents, dealers in precious metals and stones, accountants and lawyers should now be subject to money laundering checks.
FATF also decided to recommend banning shell banks - a favoured vehicle for money launderers - which have no physical presence and are not affiliated to regulated financial groups.
Educated guesses put the volume of money laundering - disguising the illegal origin of profits from drug trafficking, prostitution, tax dodging or organised crime - at between $700 billion and $1.5 trillion a year.
The International Monetary Fund estimates it accounts for two to five per cent of the world's annual economic output.
The Berlin meeting also fleshed out recommendations on combating terror funding FATF first drew up in the weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.
It issued a list of best practices advising countries on how to monitor so-called underground or informal money transfer services operated in Internet cafes, travel agents, restaurants or export/import companies.
Underground banking is based on trust and hundreds of years of tradition. Few, if any, records are kept. The customer pays money to one underground banker and trusts him to arrange with another that the intended recipient will receive the agreed sum.
The practice, not illegal in itself but seen as a common route for terror funding, originated in Asia. Large parts of the immigrant population in Europe and the United States use it to avoid expensive regular bank accounts.
FATF officials played down differences in approach among member countries after German officials had said the United States and Britain were lagging behind Germany, France and the Netherlands in cracking down on informal banking.
"We're very comfortable with our system," said Daniel Glazer, a US Treasury Department official at the meeting.
Sanio said shutting down terror money routes was tough. "To track down these small amounts of money that are transferred is like looking for the famous needle in the haystack," he said. "You have to try everything. You never know what you prevented."
The meeting admitted Russia and South Africa into FATF's ranks, providing recognition for tighter "hot money" controls adopted in those countries.
Of the countries which remain on its "black list" for not complying with anti-money-laundering standards, FATF said Ukraine, Egypt, the Cook Islands, Guatemala, Nigeria and the Philippines had made progress but Indonesia, Myanmar and Nauru, had failed to do so.