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25 June 2021Law & regulation

Malta added to FATF grey list


The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, has added Malta to its so-called grey list of countries under increased monitoring.

In October 2020, the FATF decided to recommence work on identifying new countries with strategic anti money laundering (AML) and combatting the financing of terrorism (CFT) deficiencies, which had been paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It prioritised the review of listed countries with expired or expiring deadlines of action plan items.

The FATF said Malta made a high-level political commitment in June 2021 to work with the FATF and MONEYVAL to strengthen the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime. Since the adoption of its mutual evaluation report (MER) in July 2019, Malta has made progress on a number of the recommended actions to improve its system, the FATF said, including strengthening the risk-based approach to financial supervision and improving the analytical process for financial intelligence.

Haiti, the Philippines and South Sudan all join Malta in being added to the grey list following the FATF review.