Council of Europe praises Bulgaria’s battle against money laundering

5 months ago 33

Bulgaria has improved its work against money laundering and terrorist financing, making progress on most assessment indicators, the Council of Europe’s (CoE) anti-money laundering body said on Tuesday, but it will remain one of two EU member states on the ‘grey list’ along with Croatia.

The CoE’s Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism, known as MONEYVAL, published a report showing that Bulgaria is making progress on 10 out of 12 indicators and has not deteriorated on the remaining two.

However, despite positive developments, Bulgaria remains under close surveillance, and a new report will be produced next year. Out of the 27 EU member states, only Bulgaria and Croatia are on the grey list.

“Since the adoption of its mutual evaluation report in May 2022, Bulgaria has taken numerous steps to strengthen its anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing systems,” notes MONEYVAL.

The country has made progress on political accountability, the control of banking services for money transactions, the supervision of branches and subsidiaries of foreign companies, the assurance of transparency of beneficial ownership of companies, and the supervision of financial institutions.

Bulgaria was placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list” of money laundering jurisdictions in October 2002 due to a few serious deficiencies in mechanisms for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and arms proliferation.

At the time, Bulgaria made a high-level political commitment to work on strengthening the effectiveness of anti-money laundering measures.

At the end of last year, the “grey list” included Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Croatia, Haiti, Jamaica, Mali, Mozambique, the Philippines, South Africa, and others.

Removal from the grey list could potentially facilitate easier financial transactions in foreign currencies, lower interbank fees, and increased trade and investment.

The FATF’s “blacklist” of countries at particularly high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing includes North Korea, Iran and Myanmar.

The list signals the inadequacy of a country’s financial integrity and its response to the risks and crimes related to money laundering that generate financial assets such as corruption.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)