Our correspondent Andreas Frank reports:  FATF STATEMENT ON HIGH-RISK AND NON-COOPERATIVE JURISDICTIONS

Conclusions:  The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) issued an updated statement identifying jurisdictions with strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regimes. This statement lists those jurisdictions in two categories and effectively replaces any earlier statements regarding those jurisdictions.

1) Jurisdictions where FATF members and other jurisdictions have been asked to apply countermeasures to protect the international financial system from ongoing and substantial terrorist financing and money laundering risks emanating from the jurisdictions Iran and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

2) Jurisdictions listed for having strategic AML/CTF deficiencies that have not made sufficient progress in addressing the deficiencies or have not committed to an action plan developed with FATF to address key deficiencies: Algeria, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.

Major changes to the last FATF statement on high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdictions (18.11.2013):

Two African Countries – Kenya and Tanzania – made significant progress to improve their AML/CFT regimes and are no longer on the list of “High-Risk and Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions”. Kenya and Tanzania are now identified in the FATF document, “Improving Global AML/CFT Compliance.

Afghanistan and Cambodia are jurisdictions which are not making sufficient progress, the FATF said.

Jurisdictions no longer subject to the FATF’s on-going global AML/CFT compliance process Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, and Vietnam.

The FATF kept the classification of Iran as a high-risk and non-cooperative jurisdiction and called on its members and other jurisdictions to apply counter-measures to protect the international financial system from the on-going and substantial money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks.

The FATF failed to explain how the international banks will be able to transfer safely the billions of dollars

provided by the partial lifting of the Iran sanctions.      Frank-cs.org   Report on Countries