Kazakhstan has Improved to Achieve the Lowest Risk Score for ML/TF

According to the annual report of Basel Index 2020, among the 141 countries, Kazakhstan is at 73rd rank in regards with the risk of illegal money laundering and terrorist financing.   

For Kazakhistan, this is a major improvement. From last year’s report, Kazakhstan has improved the regulations from 45 points. This has been the lowest Kazakhastan has ever achieved in the risk score for the past three years, i.e, 5.08. 

These ranks are decided by a risk index that calculates a score according to the money-laundering and terrorist financing. Sources available publically are used such as the Financial Action Task Force, the World Bank, Transparency International, and the World Economic Forum. For example, the lowest risk score is 2.36, belonging to Estonia and the highest score is 8.16 that belongs to Afghanistan. 

Kazakhstan has reached a lower score than Russia ranking 52nd and Turkey ranking 41st, Uzbekistan that ranks 43rd, and Ukraine that ranks 67th, in Europe and Central Asia. 

Kazakhstan has been working on improving its money-laundering and terrorist financing measures through Kazakhstan adapting to standards provided by FATF over the past year according to Kazakh Financial Monitoring Committee. The improvement has been due to the efforts and well-coordinated work of the country’s law enforcement, regulatory bodies, and financial monitoring bodies for fighting terrorist financing and money laundering.   

A press release by the committee reported that the committee aimed at fighting financial crimes and lessening the cash level withdrawal by 39%. 

However, the Basel index will only be able to measure the effects of the improvement of Kazakhastan and the results obtained from 2020 to 20201. 

Basel Index is a research-based index for anti-money laundering. This organization is a non-profit and they rank countries according to their risks regarding money laundering and terrorist financing.