Eduardo González
The European Commission yesterday included Gibraltar in the list of third countries “with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the European Union.”
Specifically, the Commission updated its list of jurisdictions of “high-risk third countries with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regimes”, which includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gibraltar, Mozambique, Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates and excludes Nicaragua, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Inclusion on this list does not imply the adoption of sanctions, but it does oblige European banks to reinforce controls on operations involving clients or entities from these countries.
According to the Commission, these countries have “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the European Union.” Besides, Brussels has also taken into account that all of them were included in the list of “jurisdictions under enhanced surveillance” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in March, June (specifically, Gibraltar) and October 2022.
The EU executive also acknowledges that these countries “have made written high-level political commitments to address the identified deficiencies and developed action plans with the FATF for this purpose.”The Commission welcomes these commitments and calls on these jurisdictions to complete the implementation of their respective action plans expeditiously and within the proposed timeframes,” Brussels adds. The FATF will closely monitor the implementation of the action plans.
In the case of Gibraltar, the Commission recalls that, in June 2022, the Rock made “a high-level political commitment” to work with the FATF and MONEYVAL (the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism) to strengthen the effectiveness of its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing system. However, “despite that commitment and progress, the concerns that led to the listing of Gibraltar by the FATF have not yet been fully addressed” and therefore “Gibraltar should therefore be considered as a third-country jurisdiction that has strategic deficiencies in its AML/CFT regime,” it warned.
Gibraltar’s inclusion on the list coincides with the intensification of negotiations between the UK and Brussels on Gibraltar’s future relationship with the EU. In the context of these negotiations, Spain and the Commission have presented to the British Government a “comprehensive proposal” for the creation of a zone of shared prosperity between Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar which includes, among other proposals, the adoption of provisions to combat money laundering. Last December 14, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and his British counterpart, James Cleverly, assured in Madrid that there are “clear advances” in the negotiations on Gibraltar’s future relationship with the EU, but did not want to advance any date for the agreement.
