Barbados soon off EU high risk list

Barbados will soon be officially off the European Union’s (EU) list of high risk third countries.

On March 14, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Barbados was one of five countries which the EU had concluded “no longer have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes (AML/CFT)”.

This meant Barbados, the EU said, posed no threat to the financial system of countries in Europe nor the international financial system.

This followed the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decision to remove Barbados from its greylist.

While amending the regulation related to the high risk third countries, von der Leyen said the change was not immediate and “shall enter into force on the 20th day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union”. 

“This regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all member states,” she said.

“Following the measures implemented to address the action plans agreed with the FATF, Barbados; Gibraltar; Uganda and the United Arab Emirates have remedied the strategic deficiencies in their respective
AML/CFT regimes and no longer pose a significant AML/CFT threat to the international financial system,” von der Leyen said in the regulation amendment document.

“Taking into account their relevance under the revised methodology, the Commission considers that these jurisdictions no longer have strategic deficiencies in their respective AML/CFT frameworks and do not pose a significant threat to the financial system of the EU.”

“It is therefore appropriate to delete Barbados, Gibraltar, Panama, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates from the [list of high risk third countries],” she said.

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