site.btaFinancial Action Task Force Leaves Bulgaria on Its "Grey List"

Bulgaria remains on the "grey list" of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Paris-headquartered global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. This transpired after a FATF plenary which concluded in the French capital on Friday. The outcomes of the plenary are published on the organization's website.

The "grey list" names "jurisdictions under increased monitoring." Such jurisdictions are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. When the FATF places a jurisdiction under increased monitoring, it means the country has committed to resolve swiftly the identified strategic deficiencies within agreed timeframes and is subject to increased monitoring, the FATF says on its website.

After its latest update, the "grey list" includes 24 countries. Bulgaria was first named on it on October 27, 2023. Currently, it also includes Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Lebanon, Mali, Monaco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen.

A FATF report, Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring, published on Friday, says that since October 2023, when Bulgaria made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and MONEYVAL to strengthen the effectiveness of its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) regime, the country has taken steps towards improving its AML/CFT regime, including by demonstrating initial implementation of its national action plan for its AML/CFT strategy; demonstrating initial implementation of risk-based supervision for postal money operators, currency exchange providers and real estate agents and ensuring that confiscation is pursued as a policy objective.

The report says Bulgaria should continue to work on implementing its action plan to address its strategic deficiencies, including by: (1) addressing the remaining technical compliance deficiencies; (2) ensuring that the beneficial ownership information held in the Register is accurate and up-to-date; (3) improving investigations and prosecutions of different types of money laundering in line with risks, including high-scale corruption and organized crime; (4) ensuring the ability to conduct parallel financial investigations in all terrorism investigations; (5) addressing gaps in the frameworks for targeted financial sanctions for proliferation financing; and (6) identifying the subset of non-profit organizations most vulnerable to terrorist financing abuse and demonstrating initial implementation of risk-based monitoring to prevent abuse for terrorist financing purposes.

The FATF "black list," identifying "high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action," names North Korea, Iran and Myanmar. Russia, formerly a full FATF member, was suspended by the organization in 2023, a year after the country's invasion of Ukraine.