By Tirana Times
February 22, 2020 11:17
Albania placed in FATF’s grey list for money laundering
The announcement comes after Albania was given a positive evaluation through a MONEYVAL report earlier in January on its progress towards strengthening its framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since July 2018.
TIRANA, Feb 22 – After almost five years, Albania was once again placed under “increased monitoring”, otherwise known as the “grey list”, by the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental organization established under the G7 initiative to develop policies to combat money laundering, terrorism and to finance the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Countries such as the Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cambodia, Ghana, Iceland, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia and more, made the list as well due to having “strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.”
The announcement comes after Albania was given a positive evaluation through a MONEYVAL report earlier in January on its progress towards strengthening its framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since July 2018. In this regard, the Task Force commended Albania on the progress it has made towards technical compliance and effectiveness. “In February 2020, Albania made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and MONEYVAL to strengthen the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime. Since the completion of its MER in July 2018, Albania has made progress on a number of its MER recommended actions to improve technical compliance and effectiveness, including by enhancing relevant authorities’ understanding of terrorist financing risks in order to prosecute TF more effectively and establishing a legal framework to implement targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation financing,” FATF wrote. However, despite these improvements, its decision to include Albania in the grey list again, indicates that the country is still plagued by issues.
In this line, the Minister of Finance and Economy, Anila Denaj, said that the country has made progress in many aspects, but “through a detailed examination of FATF’s latest recommendations for further improvement during the 2020-2021 period, it is clear that the most fundamental gaps are found to belong to bodies outside of the Executive. The main focus regarding effectiveness, is on two particular areas that are related to the efficiency of the justice system, the Prosecutor and the Court ”.
According to the minister, more attention “should be given to the necessity to increase penalties in cases of money laundering by the judicial system, especially in cases of high-risk transactions conducted by professionals or third parties affiliated with criminal organizations as reported by the responsible institutions, as well as to significantly increase the confiscation of criminal assets.”
However, if you look at the action plan that the authorities have drafted together with the Task Force, there are a number of other aspects that will also need to be marked within this year in order to exit what is known as the “gray list”. Albania will need, among other things, to conduct an in-depth analysis of the risks of money laundering and to enable the strengthening of institutional coordination and cooperation. It should improve the handling of requests for mutual legal assistance in time and establish effective mechanisms for detecting and preventing criminal activity in the economy, as well as making accurate and up-to-date information about proprietors available.
The FATF review is considered very important and the inclusion of Albania in the grey list could have negative effects on the country’s economy and reputation, reducing the credibility of its institutions. Seeing as it is considered as one of the safe havens for supporting terror funding and money laundering due to the list, this could have a negative impact on the banking system and foreign investments as well.
“This is not a good image for investors, neither is it for the banking system which has invested in structures to prevent [money laundering] for years.”
The opposition also made a statement regarding the FATF decision. “We are the only country in Europe to be included in this list and this shows that the mechanisms and political will to fight “dirty money” is lacking. The fight against money laundering has been one of the concerns the DP has raised since the beginning by demanding serious commitment against one of the deadliest crimes for the economy, employment and society. ”
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