FATF may remove UAE from gray list on February 23 – Kommersant

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) may announce the removal of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the gray list on February 23, the last day of the group’s plenary meeting in Paris. This is reported by Bloomberg with reference to sources.

Following a visit to the UAE in January, FATF experts concluded that the country had made significant progress in addressing shortcomings in anti-money laundering practices. Agency sources admitted that the FATF will announce the exclusion of the UAE from the gray list this week. However, the final decision has not yet been made, Bloomberg’s interlocutors emphasized. Removal from the gray list must be supported by a majority of FATF experts who confirm that the country has made significant progress in combating money laundering since the beginning of the assessment period. The UAE was included in the FATF gray list in March 2022.

The FATF sanction lists include countries that violate international requirements to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Greylisting assumes that countries are actively working to address strategic weaknesses in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes and have made such commitments. Now graylisted included more than 25 countries. Among them are Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Mali, Syria, Turkey and Vietnam. Russia’s participation in the FATF suspended.

Milena Kostereva