Moldova has strengthened its legal and institutional framework to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, but it still needs to address a number of shortcomings – MONEYVAL.
This is stated in the report of the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Assessment of Measures to Combat Money Laundering (MONEYVAL), published on June 11. The document welcomes the fact that Moldova has made progress in addressing most of the technical compliance deficiencies affecting the application of targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism, terrorist financing, and proliferation and its financing. However, MONEYVAL believes that the country has made only limited progress in addressing deficiencies affecting the application of FATF (Financial Action Task Force) standards for virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (Recommendation 15). As a result, recommendations 6 and 7 were re-rated as “largely compliant” and recommendation 15 as “partially compliant”. It noted that corrective actions taken by the authorities since the adoption of the mutual evaluation report in July 2019 and the first follow-up actions in May 2022 have improved compliance with six of the 12 recommendations that were rated as “partially compliant.” MONEYVAL notes that the country has not achieved expectations to address most technical compliance deficiencies within 3 years of the adoption of the mutual evaluation report, and calls on the Moldovan authorities to do so by June 2025. Of the 40 FATF recommendations, Moldova currently has the following rating: “compliant” – 9 recommendations; “fully compliant” – 25 recommendations, “partially compliant” – 6 recommendations. None of the FATF recommendations were found to be inappropriate. It is emphasized that Moldova continues to closely monitor the situation and is expected to report to MONEYVAL within 1 year. The Committee of Experts to Assess Measures against Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) is the Council of Europe's supervisory body tasked with assessing compliance with key international standards on combating money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the effectiveness of their application. MONEYVAL assesses 33 states and makes recommendations to national authorities on needed improvements to their anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing systems and countering the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.// 11.06.2024 — InfoMarket.
