Sri Lanka has been removed from the “Grey List” by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global policy setter on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT).
The FATF has congratulated Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia for the significant progress made in addressing the strategic AML/CFT deficiencies identified earlier by the FATF and included in their respective action plans.
These jurisdictions will no longer be subject to the FATF’s monitoring under its on-going global AML/CFT compliance process, and will work with the FATF-Style Regional Body of which they are a member to continue to strengthen their AML/CFT regimes.
In October 2016, the FATF announced that Sri Lanka will be subjected to a review of the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) of the FATF to assess the progress of AML/CFT effectiveness in the country.
After several discussions and progress reports, the FATF indicated that Sri Lanka has not made sufficient progress in 4 areas, namely International Cooperation, Supervision, Legal Persons and Arrangements and Targeted Financial Sanctions on Proliferations (North Korea and Iran).
As a result, the FATF at its Plenary held at Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2017, listed Sri Lanka as a jurisdiction with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies in the FATF’s Compliance Document which is more commonly identified as “the Grey List” and provided a time bound Action Plan for implementation.
Since the listing in November 2017, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka together with other stakeholders had taken a series of effective and tangible steps to implement the FATF Action Plan. Sri Lanka reported the progress achieved in the implementation of the Action Plan regularly to the FATF. (Colombo Gazette)
(Colombo Gazette)