FATF Greylisting Delegation Arrive In Malta For Final Review
The Financial Action Task Force assessors have arrived in Malta to meet with Maltese government officials before potentially deciding to remove the island from its grey list.
According to the Times of Malta, the FATF delegation is expected to stay in Malta for three days, during which time they will meet with officials from the government to determine whether or not enough work has been done to remove Malta from the grey list.
If the delegation decides that Malta has done enough to get off the list, it could be voted off by June, when the next FATF plenary meeting will be held.
The global anti-money laundering watchdog voted to add Malta to its grey list in June 2021, as a result of the lack of action to battle financial crimes in Malta.
In the official communications that outline the FATF’s motivation for the grey-listing of Malta, the following emerge as the reasons:
- a lax attitude towards rampant tax evasion;
- lack of risk-based and analytical financial intelligence to resource the police and prosecutors to investigate and charge complex money laundering, including tax evasion;
- lapses in ensuring that beneficial ownership of entities, covering not only the obvious case of companies, but all sorts of vehicles including obscure NGOs.
Malta was placed on the list with another twenty or so countries, including war-torn Yemen and Syria.
Earlier this year, the FATF announced that Malta substantially completed its action plan, bringing it a step closer to being removed from the grey list.
Do you think Malta will be removed from the grey list?
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