The Diplomat
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will send a mission of experts to Gibraltar to confirm on the ground that the Rock “has substantially completed” the action plan imposed on it to remove it from its “gray list.”
At the end of a three-day plenary session at its headquarters in Paris, the FATF indicated in a statement on Friday that it is trying to verify that “the implementation of the reforms against money laundering and the financing of terrorism has begun and is being maintained.”
Also if “the political commitment necessary to maintain the application in the future continues to exist”, reports Efe.
This organization linked to the OECD does not set a date for the visit or for a possible review of its status.
The FATF highlighted that among the “key reforms” that Gibraltar has carried out are the application of “effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions for offences” of money laundering and terrorist financing or the imposition of final confiscation sentences in line with the risks that occur there.
Remember that in June 2022 the British colony had assumed “a high-level political commitment” to work with both the FATF and Moneyval to strengthen its regime against these violations of international financial rules.
Moneyval is a committee of experts of the Council of Europe in charge of evaluating measures against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The Rock’s Minister of Justice, Trade and Industry, Nigel Feetham, was in Paris on Friday to inform the plenary of the “continued commitment that Gibraltar maintains with the Moneyval process and the efforts that Gibraltar has made to comply with its action plan and exit from the FATF ‘grey list’,” his cabinet reported in a statement.
Panama, Albania, Cayman Islands and Jordan left this list of “jurisdictions under reinforced surveillance” last Friday, while Bulgaria entered.
After this review, Barbados, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Croatia, Gibraltar, Haiti, Jamaica, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Syria, are on the “gray list”. Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen.
