The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering body MONEYVAL has published new reports on Albania and Slovenia assessing measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing.
In a follow-up report released on 21 June, MONEYVAL finds that Albania has improved its measures for tackling money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT). Progress has notably been observed in regulating and supervising notaries and real estate agents. The licensing authority for notaries is now empowered to revoke licenses for the infringement of AML/CFT legislation. Albania also introduced risk-based supervision over real estate agents. The report thus found Albania to have improved its compliance with the FATF recommendations on transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements, as well as on regulation and supervision of designated non-financial businesses and professions.
Overall, Albania has made progress in addressing most of the shortcomings identified in 2018: out of the 40 recommendations, Albania currently is rated as “compliant” on six recommendations, “largely compliant” on 31 recommendations, “partially compliant” on two recommendations, and one recommendation is not applicable.
In a follow-up report published today, MONEYVAL concludes that Slovenia has also improved its measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The definition of virtual services providers has been brought in line with international standards. Powers of customs authorities have been strengthened – notably, their powers to request and obtain further information where a false custom declaration or disclosure, or failure to declare, has been detected. Moreover, the customs authority is now empowered to request information from carriers of cash crossing the border between Slovenia and other EU member states.
Slovenia has achieved full compliance with eleven of the 40 FATF recommendations delivered in 2017. It retains minor deficiencies in the implementation of 28 recommendations, where it was rated “largely compliant”; and remains “partially compliant” in respect of one recommendation. Slovenia has no “non-compliant” rating.
