With Caribbean countries continuing to come under scrutiny as the international community evinces an enhanced level of worry over the scourge of money-laundering, one of Jamaica’s leading daily newspapers on Wednesday July 10 reported prominently, with a generous measure of seeming exuberance, the country’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) FATF’s ‘grey list,’ regarded as the ‘rogues’ register’ of countries perceived as being accommodating to money laundering.
The July 10 Business Observer story reported on one of the outcomes of a June 26-28 meeting of the global body in Singapore that sets standards for countering money laundering, among other transnational crimes that include terrorism, which was a release of an “updated list” of countries that “did not include Jamaica for the first time in over four years… In other words,” The Observer report trumpeted, “Jamaica was no longer on the so-called ‘grey list’ which the FATF issues to signal countries that are not doing enough to combat financial crimes.”
The other primary outcome of the meeting, according to The Observer report, was the release of “an updated list of countries with weak measures to combat money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing risks.” Cautious perhaps about the ‘risks’ of placing countries on lofty perches, the FATF boasts no ‘white list’ though, according to The Observer report. “It is understood that once your country’s name is not on a list, you are seen as maintaining systems that comply with that of fighting money laundering and the financing of terrorism as outlined by FATF,” the Observer report says.
At a Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) meeting in Port-of-Spain earlier this month, Guyana reportedly defended its bona fides by securing the adoption of a key anti-money laundering report which was adopted at its 58th Plenary and Working Group Meetings.
