The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has grey listed Bulgaria and approved the UAE, Gibraltar among others for exit compliance inspection as four jurisdictions, namely Albania, the Cayman Islands, Panama and Jordan came off the list at the conclusion of its October 2023 plenary in Paris. Grey listed South Africa was among the countries with a substantial  still […]

The Council of the European Union has added the Seychelles, Belize and Antigua and Barbuda to its list of 16 non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes. All three jurisdictions were “found to be lacking with regard to the exchange of tax information on request”, the Council said in a statement on 17 October. It also revealed […]

In a landmark judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has held that registers containing the personal details of ‘beneficial owners‘ of companies and accessible to the public at large infringe fundamental rights.   The court said in a statement yesterday (22 November) “the provision of the anti-money-laundering directive whereby Member States must […]

Malta was voted off the Financial Action Task Force grey list on June 15th, one year after first being labelled an untrustworthy financial jurisdiction by the global watchdog. The FATF vote is secret and a formal announcement of that decision will only be made at the end of its plenary, on Friday afternoon. However, Times of […]

At the February 2022 Plenary the FATF made the initial determination that “Malta has substantially completed its action plan.” In June 2021 Malta was placed on the FATF grey list – the list of the countries under increased monitoring by the FATF. In its February 2022 plenary the FATF noted that Malta has made the following key reforms: […]

Malta last week presented the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) with an action plan to get off the regulator’s grey list of jurisdictions, according to the Times of Malta in a report today (13 September). The government presented the plan to the global watchdog during a virtual meeting on Thursday, it said. “It’s about concretely […]

The European Commission (EC) has proposed the creation of an EU-wide anti-money laundering authority (AMLA) with powers to directly supervise the highest-risk cross-border financial firms. According to Reuters, non-compliant firms could risk penalties up to EUR10 million or 10 per cent of their annual turnover. The AMLA would aim to launch in 2024. The EC […]