FATF keeps Russia's status unchanged, puts Algeria, Angola, Cote d'Ivoire and Lebanon on 'gray' list
MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax) - The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has put Algeria, Angola, Cote d'Ivoire and Lebanon on the so-called "gray" list," i.e., a list of jurisdictions that are under intensive monitoring of the organization; Russia's status has remained unchanged - its membership in the group remains suspended.
Sessions of the group took place in Paris on October 21-25.
At the same time, Senegal was removed from the list.
The list now includes 24 jurisdictions: Algeria, Angola, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Venezuela, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Cameroon, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Monaco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, the Philippines, Croatia, and the Republic of South Africa.
FATF has left unchanged the list of high-risk jurisdictions, the so-called black list, which includes North Korea, Iran and Myanmar.
The Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) said, commenting on the FATF decision to keep Russia's status unchanged, said the Russian system to prevent money laundering meets the international standards. "The 2019 FATF evaluation and the evaluation performed by international experts in 2023 confirmed that. Russia remains an active member of the FATF global network, scrupulously fulfilling its obligations on cooperation on prevention of money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing of dissemination of weapons of mass destruction," the service said in a release.
FATF suspended Russia's membership in the group on February 24, 2023. Russia kept this status later, in June 2023. The country has not been put on the gray or black list.
Russia was removed from the FATF black list in September 2002 after the first evaluation of the compliance of the Russian money laundering and terrorism financing prevention system with the international standards. The country became a FATF member on June 19, 2003 after the second evaluation in April 2003. The third round of the mutual evaluation of compliance of the Russian money laundering and terrorism financing prevention system with the international standards took place in 2008. Russia has regularly reported on progress on the improvement of its national money laundering and terrorism financing prevention system with the international standards in FATF plenary sessions since 2010.