CoE MONEYVAL Releases Follow-Up Report
The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering body MONEYVAL released a follow up-report on Georgia on 28 November, examining the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures.
MONEYVAL is a permanent monitoring body of the Council of Europe, which works on evaluating compliance with international standards and their implementation, in the direction of combating money laundering and terrorism financing. Its last report on Georgia was released in 2020.
Improvements noted by the report included the introduction of an electronic control system for online casinos, the requirement of a lack of criminal convictions for those owning and managing casinos, the reduction of limitations on the Financial Monitoring Service to disseminate information as well as the introduction of a broad regulatory framework for the investment fund sector.
In line with those findings, Georgia has been upgraded from “partially compliant” to “largely compliant” with the Financial Action Task Force Recommendation 29.
The report lamented, however, that measures taken by Georgia were “not sufficient” to change the ratings of Recommendations 22, 28, and 35, which remain with the label “partially compliant”.
In connection with those recommendations, MONEYVAL underscored that while steps have been taken in the right direction, there are still several gaps that need to be addressed. Moreover, Georgia is “encouraged to continue its efforts to address the remaining deficiencies.”
The report did state that overall, Georgia has made “sufficient progress” towards addressing some of the technical compliance deficiencies relating to one of the recommendations as identified in the previous report.
Georgia will remain in the enhanced follow-up category regarding the monitoring mechanism, which involves a more thorough follow-up process. The country is expected to report back on the remaining deficiencies within one year.
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