UK puts Malta on high-risk list for money laundering, terrorist financing
Time of Malta, 22 July 2021
The UK has placed Malta among the list of high-risk countries for money laundering and terrorist financing.
In regulations that came into force on July 13, the UK removed Ghana from its previous list and added, Malta, Haiti, the Philippines and South Sudan.
The other countries currently on the list are: Albania, Barbados, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, Jamaica, Mauritius, Morocco, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Senegal, Syria, Uganda, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. Continue reading “Article: UK puts Malta on high-risk list for money laundering, terrorist financing”
Money laundering can often be seen as a somewhat nebulous, victimless crime that doesn’t affect the everyday person. But Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit Guidance and Outreach Manager Dr Clara Borg Bonaci tells David Lindsay about how money laundering not only deprives government coffers of funds that could be used for the betterment of society, it also feeds serious predicate crimes such as the trafficking of drugs and arms, human smuggling and child sexual exploitation – ‘horribly destructive crimes that have an immense social cost’
Earlier this week the Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL published a progress report showing significantly improved ratings for Malta in its fight against money laundering and terrorist financing from a technical perspective. Thursday’s report clearly acknowledged the progress made since Malta’s earlier evaluation, at times doing so quite openly when confirming that, “Malta was among the first MONEYVAL countries to implement the regulatory and institutional framework and conduct assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risks in this area. Malta’s rating on the implementation of this recommendation has been upgraded from ‘partially compliant’ to ‘largely compliant’.”
The Maltese government has signed a United Nations declaration promising to “investigate, prosecute, and punish threats and acts of violence” against journalists, provide a “Safe and enabling environment” for whistleblowers, and ‘take effective measures” to “prevent, investigate, and prosecute” corruption involving public officials.