Albania re-enters grey launderer

Albania results in the only European state along with Iceland that has been identified in the so-called grey list of money laundering, which is under continued monitoring by the MONEYVAL Financial Forces (FATF), which is a permanent mechanism of the Council of Europe that has the duty to assess the implementation of standards in the fight against money laundering and organised crime.

This list includes jurisdictions that lack strategic and high risk and are under added monitoring.
The announcement was made today (21 February) by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which published the list of subjects under extensive monitoring.

The new countries subject to monitoring are Albania, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Uganda. Albania is the only one from Europe to appear on this list, along with Iceland.

The report says that jurisdictions under increased monitoring are actively working with the FATF to address strategic shortcomings in their regimes to fight money laundering, financing terrorism. When FATF imposes a jurisdiction under added monitoring, it means that the country is committed to quickly resolving identified strategic shortcomings within the agreed deadlines and is subject to increased monitoring. This list is often referred to as greylists. *

The report cites Albania's goodwill to address problems. In February 2020, Albania made a high-level political commitment to work with FATF and MONEYVAL to strengthen its regime's effectiveness in the fight against money laundering.

Since the conclusion of the bilateral evaluation report ( MERCual evacuation report in July 2018, Albania has made progress in a number of recommended proverbial actions to improve technical compliance and effectiveness, including increasing the understanding of relevant authorities for the dangers of financing terrorism. Albania will work to implement its action plan, including:

(1) Performing an additional deepening analysis to understand enough money laundering and other risks, and strengthening co-ordination and institutional cooperation;

(2) Improve timely treatment of mutual judicial assistance requirements;

(3) Establish effective mechanisms for uncovering and preventing criminal infiltratement of the economy, including strengthening the competencies of competent authorities to take necessary action;

(4) ensuring that accurate and updated property information is available on time;

(5) The increase in the number and improvement of criminal prosecutions and seizures for money laundering, especially in cases involving foreign statements or money laundering of third parties;

(6) Improved implementation of targeted financial sanctions, especially through enhanced supervisory action and objective, active approach.

The FATF identifies jurisdictions with poor measures to fight money laundering and financing of terrorism (AML / CFT) in two FATF public documents that are published three times a year. FATF's process to publicly rank countries with weak regimes AML / CFT has proved effective. By February 2020, The FATF has examined over 100 countries and jurisdictions and has publicly identified 80 of them. 60 of them have made the reforms necessary to address their AML weaknesses / The CFT and has been removed from the process.

Albania had been on this list in 2011-2015 and was out of the list in 2015. /Monitor