Corridors of Integrity: India-UAE Financial Vigilance, FATF Readiness, and Regional Economic Security

Abstract

Purpose. The India-UAE corridor carries more than USD 100 billion in annual trade and the world's second-largest remittance flow, yet the same channels create money-laundering, terrorist-financing and proliferation-financing risks that bear directly on investor confidence and regional economic security. This paper asks how bilateral financial vigilance enhances readiness for the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) fifth-round evaluations and stabilises the corridor's economic value. Methods. A qualitative, interpretive design synthesises primary instruments (the FATF 2022 Methodology, mutual-evaluation reports, UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 10 of 2025, the 1999 bilateral treaties), official statistics, peer-reviewed literature and open-source enforcement records, mapping cooperation mechanisms to FATF Immediate Outcomes through three illustrative cases (Mahadev, PYYPL and a stalled extradition). Findings. Coordinated vigilance functions as an “effectiveness-manufacturing mechanism”: joint risk assessment, near-real-time intelligence exchange, coordinated confiscation and cross-border public-private cooperation generate outcome evidence that assessors reward, and each joint action credits both states at once. Conclusions. Measurable financial vigilance is a form of strategic-economic capability. The paper proposes a bilateral FATF-readiness scorecard to close a disaggregated-data gap and a phased, agency-specific roadmap, offering a replicable template for South-Gulf and South-South cooperation.