A global anti-money laundering watchdog is set to criticize a pair of European countries for failing to require banks to identify parties that send or receive wire transactions, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The world's leading financial crime watchdog will soon ask countries to further harmonize their legal structures in an effort to stop criminals from exploiting differences in jurisdictional laws.
Officials from 26 U.S. agencies and departments have begun a formal evaluation of the country's legal and regulatory vulnerabilities to illicit finance as required by an international anti-money laundering organization.
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.
The United States has done little to address gaps identified in 2006 by an international anti-money laundering watchdog, despite a follow-up national review expected within the next two years, say consultants.
Resolving the growing tension between data privacy restrictions and anti-money laundering laws and overseeing the next round of mutual evaluations will define Russia's stewardship of a global anti-money laundering group, say analysts.
Some jurisdictions will likely struggle to comply with a call by the world's top anti-money laundering watchdog to assess their own vulnerabilities to financial crime, say industry experts.
The world's premier financial crime watchdog declined Friday to suspend Turkey's membership and disclosed how its assessors will begin evaluating jurisdictions on the efficacy with which they fight illicit finance.
Europe's biggest financial institutions are largely prepared to comply with newly proposed amendments to the EU's anti-money laundering directive, compliance officers and banking attorneys say.
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.
Global banks with business in Turkey are anticipating the outcome of an intergovernmental organization's plenary meeting this month that could see the country suspended from the group or removed from a blacklist.
An intergovernmental group's revised expectations of how countries should seize looted assets may prove difficult to meet, and could lower the mutual evaluation scores nations receive for their anti-money laundering controls.
An intergovernmental group that evaluates how countries fight money laundering and terrorist financing will change how it grades compliance with its standards beginning next year, say individuals familiar with discussions.
Compliance with beneficial ownership standards will be one of the top priorities for Financial Action Task Force examiners during the group's next round of jurisdictional reviews, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The world's top financial crime watchdog Thursday disclosed revisions to its blacklists and its widely-cited standards on combating money laundering and terrorist financing.
Divergences in international lists of predicate offenses to money laundering have hampered the fight against financial criminals, according to a report by the Australian government.
The Financial Action Task Force is weighing whether to ask jurisdictions to loosen their privacy laws and require companies to retain data on their owners, among other changes to the group's standards.
More than a dozen governments are working with the Financial Action Task Force to draft guidance on how to identify financial transactions tied to human trafficking, say individuals familiar with the matter.
The Financial Action Task Force is likely to reject a proposal that would soften its standard on compliance controls for the accounts of political figures, according to an official at the intergovernmental group.