Terrorist Financing Targeting Center Highlights Key Achievements in Calendar Year 2025

In 2025, the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC) continued to strengthen multilateral cooperation among its member states to disrupt terrorist financing networks, enhance partner capacity, and advance collective action against evolving terrorist threats. Through convenings in Oman, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, as well as multiple virtual meetings, the TFTC advanced its work across four core pillars—executive coordination and information sharing, joint designations, institutional capacity building, and fellowship initiatives—reinforcing its role as a central platform for coordinated counter-terrorist financing efforts across the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Executive Committee Engagement and Strategic Coordination

Throughout 2025, the TFTC convened four Executive Committee meetings and information-sharing sessions to guide strategic priorities and deepen operational coordination among member states. These engagements provided a forum for senior officials to exchange views on emerging terrorist financing risks, share national priority areas, and align multilateral responses including joint disruptive action.

Discussions and information sharing during the year addressed critical topics, including combatting terrorist use of digital assets, specific typologies that malign actors use to facilitate sanctions evasion activity,  implementation of the “snapback” of United Nations Iran-related sanctions, and terrorism-related counter-proliferation financing typologies, based on a June 2025 FATF report. Collectively, these sessions helped shape shared priorities and informed future capacity-building efforts.

Joint Designations

In 2025, the TFTC demonstrated its continued commitment to collective action through coordinated joint designations targeting terrorist actors and facilitators. These actions underscored the TFTC’s ability to leverage multilateral cooperation to impose tangible consequences on individuals and networks that support terrorism.

Through two separate actions, TFTC member states jointly designated 18 individuals affiliated with the ISIL and al-Shabaab, disrupting terrorist networks operating in Somalia, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These designations targeted individuals involving in financing, logistics, recruitment, and operational support, cutting off their access to the international financial system and constraining their ability to move funds and resources across borders. By acting together, TFTC member states amplified the impact of these designations and reinforced the shared resolve to counter terrorist organizations and their supporters.

Capacity Building

Capacity building remained a central focus of the TFTC’s work in 2025. Through four workshops, the TFTC supported member states – including over 500 participations from government and the private sector – in strengthening their legal, regulatory, and operational frameworks to counter terrorist financing.

Over the course of the year, workshops were led by representatives from the UN Counter-Terrorism Center, the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), digital assets analysis firms, and multiple agencies from five member states. These programs addressed a wide range of technical areas, including emerging technologies and virtual assets, detecting and penalizing sanctions evasion, and the role of public-private engagement in identifying and disrupting illicit finance. Sessions also highlighted best practices drawn from FATF mutual evaluations and experiences drafting terrorist financing risk assessments, enabling participants to translate lessons learned into practical implementation.

In addition to these workshops, the TFTC held a roundtable with banks from across the region to discuss U.S. sanctions relief for Syria and the management of terrorist financing risks in the country. By fostering peer-to-peer exchanges and hands-on training, the TFTC enhanced members’ collective ability to detect, investigate, and disrupt terrorist financing networks.

Fellowship and Professional Exchange Programs

The TFTC’s fellowship initiatives continued to play an important role in building long-term expertise and relationships among member states in 2025. Fellows both joined the capacity-building workshops and participated in additional targeted briefings, providing participants with opportunities for deeper technical learning, robust professional exchange, and more meaningful engagement.

Through these fellowships, practitioners enhanced their subject matter expertise, strengthened cross-border networks, and gained exposure to diverse approaches to countering terrorist financing. These relationships support ongoing information sharing and cooperation beyond formal meetings and contribute to the durability of the TFTC partnership.

Looking Ahead

Building on the progress achieved in 2025, the TFTC remains committed to adapting to evolving threats and strengthening collective responses to terrorist financing. Through sustained coordination, capacity building, joint action, and professional engagement, the TFTC will continue to support its member states in protecting the international financial system from terrorist abuse.