Turkey, Jordan placed on FATF’s grey list

PARIS: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Thursday placed Turkey on the “grey list” over money laundering and terrorism financing.

“Turkey had a mutual evaluation, assessment in late 2019. The report outlined a large number of serious issues regarding Turkey’s efforts to prevent and combat money laundering and terrorist financing,” said FATF President Dr Marcus Pleyer.

“Since then, Turkey has made some progress across all areas of concerns, however, serious concerns remains,” he added. “This includes concerning supervision, in particular high-risk sectors such as bank, precious stone dealers, and real estate agents.”

He added that it needed to show it is effectively addressing money laundering cases and terror financing. He also took notice of Turkey’s clampdown on non-profit organisations.

“The FATF is aware of human right’s groups concerns about Turkey’s treatement of non-profit organisations. Turkey needs to implement a truly risk-free approach and ensure authorities don’t disrupt legitimate activity,” said Pleyer.

The FAFT president also advised Turkey to effectively tackle money-laundering charges and serious organised crimes and corruption. “The Turkish government has given a high-level political commitment to continue to make necessary changes. I urge them to turn that commitment into concrete action,” he said.

Commenting on the various other decisions taken during the plenary meeting, the FATF president said that Botswana and Mauritius had been taken of the financial watchdog’s grey list. Both countries gave high-level involvement to improve their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finances.

He said that Zimbabwe had completed its action plan and was awaiting on-site inspection, which would be carried out once the Covid-19 situation allowed.

Dr Pleyer also announced that Jordan, Mali and Turkey had been added to the list and had all agreed to action plans. He said that an assessment was carried out on Turkey in 2019 which outlined serious issues regarding money laundering and terror financing.