site.btaCoE’s MONEYVAL Committee: Bulgaria Has Improved Measures for Tackling Money Laundering, Combating Terrorism Financing

Bulgaria has improved its measures for tackling money laundering and combating financing of terrorism, concludes the Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL Committee in a report released on Tuesday. The report is a follow-up to MONEYVAL’s mutual evaluation report of Bulgaria, adopted in May 2022.

The follow-up report found Bulgaria to have improved its compliance with 10 Financial Action Task Force’s Recommendations, namely those on national cooperation and coordination, politically exposed persons, money or value transfer services, internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries,  designated non-professional business and professions customer due diligence, transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements, regulation and supervision of financial institutions, powers of supervisors, on cash couriers, and on statistics.

Bulgaria has taken numerous steps to strengthen its anti-money laundering and combatting terrorist financing systems in the last two years, the report says. Only minor deficiencies remain for other Recommendations in the 2022 report.

Bulgaria will remain in enhanced follow-up and will continue to report back to MONEYVAL on progress to strengthen its implementation of anti-money laundering and combating financing of terrorism measures. Bulgaria is expected to report back within one year’s time.

Bulgarian legislation is assessed as compliant or largely compliant with 27 out of 40 Recommendations, and as partially compliant with 13 recommendations. There are no Recommendations that Bulgaria has failed to comply with, according to the report.