Turkey's vulnerability to illicit financiers has grown over the past year, in part due to its deepening economic relationship with Iran and turmoil along its southern border, say policy advocates.
A global watchdog against financial crime removed Turkey from a list of jurisdictions that haven't sufficiently complied with its standards, despite the country's failure to meet several of the group's goals.
The Supreme Court nears a ruling on the long-running Arab Bank case, FATF spares Afghanistan from its blacklist, and more, in this week's news roundup.
A dearth of trained staff, ineffective mutual evaluations and questions raised by last year's audit of Cypriot efforts to foil financial criminals motivated an intergovernmental group's adoption this month of new quality controls.
A new grading system by an intergovernmental group on how effectively jurisdictions fight money laundering and terrorist financing is likely to compel global financial institutions to rethink their geographic risk-rankings.
The Financial Action Task Force is set to implement a two-tiered grading system for future mutual evaluations as part of an effort to better score the efficacy of anti-money laundering regimes.
The Turkish government's longstanding relationship with Hamas has stalled the country's passage of counterterrorist financing measures and threatened its involvement with an influential intergovernmental group, analysts say.
The Financial Action Task Force threatened Friday to suspend Turkey's membership if the country fails to pass counterterrorist financing laws ahead of a Feb. 22 meeting by the group.
Turkey announces plans to impose sanctions against Syria due to violence against government protestors, FinCEN asks for comments on proposed revised MSB registration form, and more, in this week's roundup.
Awareness of anti-money laundering (AML) responsibilities is low among government authorities and nonbank financial institutions in Turkey and Georgia, according to reports by two international groups focused on global AML standards.