AML / CFT: FATF demands more effort from developing countries
The Financial Action Task Force says that there are a large number of countries which it has not yet assessed against the 40 + 9 Recommendations. It already has a long list of, mainly, developing countries that it is pressing for ever more action.
In alphabetical order, the countries which are criticised but not strongly so, at least not yet, are
Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina
Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam
Cambodia
Ecuador
Honduras
Kyrgyzstan
Mongolia, Morocco
Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua
Paraguay, Philippines
Sudan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Trinidad and Tobago
Venezuela, Vietnam
Yemen
Zimbabwe.
Ukraine receives approval for having "largely met its commitments."
Ghana, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania and Thailand are named as "jurisdiction not making sufficient progress."
All the countries named, except Ukraine, have notable deficiencies in their laws and regulations, most notably in relation, in several cases, to a failure to properly create criminal offences relating to terrorist financing.
Other failures include an insufficiently widely defined financial sector which leaves the money launderer with the opportunity to go jurisdiction shopping during the laundering process and to introduce or move funds around the financial sector internationally.
The notes are valuable in that they indicate risk areas for those conducting dealings with the listed countries. However, it is important to recognise that the FATF members have wildly patchy enforcement even if their laws are in place and so this list should not be regarded as indicating that those countries not on the list are safe to deal with.
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