Cambodia Exits FATF Anti-Money Laundering Gray list, Philippines Remain

The global watchdog has removed Cambodia from its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring.

According to the details published by FATF following its latest plenary meeting on Friday (24th February 2023), Cambodia and Morocco both have exited the FATF grey list due to significant progress and improvements made in respective AML/CFT regimes covered by their individual action plans.  

The FATF stated, “Each country has addressed its technical deficiencies to meet the commitments of its action plan on strategic deficiencies that the FATF identified in February 2019 and 2021 respectively.”

“Both countries are no longer subject to the FATF’s increased monitoring process but will continue to work with the FATF-style regional body (FSRB) of which they are a member to strengthen their AML/CFT regimes further.”

But the Philippines still remains under the FATF’s grey list. The body said that while the Philippines had “continued progress across its action plan,” all current deadlines on progress had “now expired and work remains.”

The work included, “demonstrating that supervisors are using anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism controls to mitigate risks associated with casino junkets.”

The governor of the Philippine Central bank stated in January 2023, that his country has been granted a one-year extension, until January 2024, to meet the financial standards needed to get off the FATF greylist. 

The Financial Action Task Force describes its jurisdictions under increased monitoring as those actively working with the agency to address the strategic deficiencies in their regime to combat terrorist and proliferation financing and money laundering. 

The FATF added Cambodia to the greylist in 2019 mainly because of concerns over the lack of Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financial Terrorism controls, especially in the nation’s casino industry. Later in 2021, the country failed in the FATF’s assessment when the global watchdog expressed “Significant Concerns” over authorities’ progress in Cambodia. FATF stated that the country had “failed to complete its action plan, which fully expired in January 2021.”

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