FATF
The intergovernmental body that writes the world's anti-money-laundering rules, despite having no power to fine anyone.
The Financial Action Task Force was set up at the 1989 G7 summit in Paris and is housed at the OECD. Its forty recommendations followed a year later, covering customer due diligence, suspicious transaction reporting and bank record-keeping. Special recommendations on terrorist financing were added after 9/11, and in 2019 the rules were stretched to cover virtual assets, which is where the crypto travel rule comes from.
The FATF has no legal teeth. Its leverage is the mutual evaluation and the lists. A country on the grey list, officially "under increased monitoring", soon notices it through pricier correspondent banking and slower payments. The black list has been the same three names for years: North Korea, Iran and Myanmar. Russia's membership was suspended in February 2023.