Tag Archives: Financial Action Task Force

The Emirate strikes back

MLROs are used to reacting to lists and warnings issued by governments and by agencies such as the FATF.  But when things change rapidly in a jurisdiction, it may be unwise to wait for an official notification, and more sensible … Continue reading

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Grey clouds are gathering

I want to talk about the FATF.  First, I think it’s called the “eff-ay-tee-eff” – not “fat-fee” or (occasionally) “faft”.  And second, I’m interested in the significance of their grey list (officially, their list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring).  Not … Continue reading

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Lifelong learning

At the start of my working life, I did a self-assessment questionnaire which indicated that my strengths lay in keeping myself to myself (a team worker I ain’t) and in learning more and more about less and less – in … Continue reading

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Chewing the FATF

Last week the FATF met for its regular plenary meeting and – as it does three times a year – updated its list of what I call “dodgy countries”, which are more correctly known as “jurisdictions under increased monitoring”.  In … Continue reading

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Making AML count

One of the most common requests I hear when designing AML training for clients is for case studies (which I have blogged about recently) and for “lessons learned”.  Alongside this, we have regulators regularly reminding us that their final notices … Continue reading

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The law(yer) is an ass

AML efforts tend to move in one direction: more, greater, stronger, bigger – whatever the right adjective may be.  Occasionally we see an unwinding (as when many jurisdictions removed general insurance business from the AML family) but for the most … Continue reading

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FATF 1, EU 0

The Fourth Money Laundering Directive brought us many delights, including Article 9: “Third-country jurisdictions which have strategic deficiencies in their national AML/CFT regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union (‘high-risk third countries’) shall be identified … Continue reading

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Facecrook?

Here’s what I have read about Facebook Libra: According to the Financial Times, it is “a new global digital currency backed by assets and supported by more than two dozen companies ranging from Visa and Mastercard to Lyft and Spotify”. … Continue reading

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Too much of a bad thing

Please may I distract you from the festering plague sore that is Brexit by drawing your attention instead to something we Brits do rather well, which is AML supervision.  In fact we’re so good at this that we have dozens … Continue reading

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Big worries about small accounts

The news has been full in recent days of the financial activities of the “super-rich” and fiscally sophisticated.  (That’s my phrase, that last bit, but I can imagine it catching on.  Who knows: we might even start talking about the … Continue reading

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