Gibraltar taken off FATF grey list during 2024 Paris Plenary

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has congratulated four countries for meeting international AML standards and getting off the grey list. 

Uganda, the UAE, Barbados and Gibraltar have all been excluded from the list of redtaped countries after the latest FATF preliminary meeting concluded that they have fixed all AML deficiencies within the agreed timeframes. 

The Action Plan that the group of four was assigned to followed extensive evaluations that put them under increased monitoring by FATF. After an on-site visit to each of the countries, the regulator has decided to stop subjecting them to the process, given that they continue to strengthen their AML/CFT regimes. 

The plenary session also concluded with a new risk-based guidance for the implementation of Recommendation 25 on the beneficial ownership and transparency of legal arrangements – seeking to prevent global crime syndicates from using legal pathways to launder money. 

In this sense, an agreement was also made to launch a public consultation for potential changes to Recommendation 16 overseeing the traceability of transactions, to better suit it for relevant changes in payment systems and modern messaging standards. 

All announcements were made in Paris under the close watch of delegates from more than 200 jurisdictions, as well as FATF’s President T. Raja Kumar. 

Kumar’s Presidency term concludes at the end of June 2024, after which the current FATF Vice President Elisa de Anda Madrazo will take the reins for a fixed two-year period.