The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has recently shared New Zealand’s progress in its efforts focused on “strengthening measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing.”
FATF noted in a blog post that since the 2021 assessment of New Zealand’s measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing and the 2022 Follow-Up, the country has reportedly taken “a number of actions to strengthen its framework.”
In line with the FATF Procedures for mutual evaluations, the country “has reported back to the FATF on the action it has taken since their mutual evaluation.”
Consequently, to reflect New Zealand‘s progress, the FATF has “now re-rated the country” on 5 Recommendations:
- Recommendation 14 is re-rated from partially compliant to largely compliant
- Recommendation 16 is re-rated from partially compliant to largely compliant
- Recommendation 19 is re-rated from partially compliant to compliant
- Recommendation 22 is re-rated from partially compliant to largely compliant
- Recommendation 23 is re-rated from partially compliant to largely compliant
Today, New Zealand is “compliant” on 9 Recommendations and largely compliant on 25. The country remains “partially compliant” on 6 Recommendations.
New Zealand will report back to the FATF on progress achieved in improving the implementation of its AML/CFT measures in its 5th round mutual evaluation.
In another separate update, it was noted that “through its nine FATF-Style Regional Bodies (FSRBs), the FATF brings together a global network of 205 jurisdictions that have each committed at the highest political level, to implementing the FATF Recommendations.”
FATF and FSRBs conduct peer reviews on an ongoing basis “to assess how effectively their respective members’ AML/CFT measures work in practice, and how well they have implemented the technical requirements of the FATF Recommendations.”
This data from FATF provides “an up-to-date overview of the ratings that assessed countries obtained for effectiveness and technical compliance (last updated on 18 July 2024).”
FATF also shared in another key update the Follow-Up report analyzing the Republic of Tajikistan‘s progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in its MER.
Tajikistan has demonstrated “significant progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies noted in the Mutual Evaluation.”
For more details, check here.
