The Republic of Moldova has strengthened its legal and institutional framework to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, but it still needs to address several shortcomings, concludes MONEYVAL in a follow-up report released today. The follow-up report welcomes that the Republic of Moldova has made progress in addressing most of the technical compliance deficiencies impacting the application of targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism, terrorism financing, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and its financing (i.e., Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations 6 and 7).
However, MONEYVAL finds that the country has made only limited progress in remedying shortcomings affecting the application of FATF standards on virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (Recommendation 15). As a result, Recommendations 6 and 7 have been re-rated as Largely Compliant and Recommendation 15 as Partially Compliant. The remediation measures undertaken by the authorities since the adoption of the mutual evaluation report in July 2019 and the first follow-up in May 2022 have improved compliance with respect to six of the 12 recommendations that were assessed as being partially compliant.
MONEYVAL notes that the country has not achieved the expectation of addressing most of the technical compliance deficiencies within three years after the adoption of the mutual evaluation report and urges the Moldovan authorities to do so by June 2025.
Out of the 40 FATF Recommendations, the Republic of Moldova is currently rated as:
- Compliant – nine recommendations
- Largely Compliant – 25 recommendations
- Partially Compliant – six recommendations
None of the FATF recommendations are assessed as non-compliant.
The Republic of Moldova remains in enhanced follow-up and is expected to report back to MONEYVAL within one year.
