Partial progress on Cyprus' compliance with the standards of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, according to the MONEYVAL Progress Report of the Council of Europe Terrorism Laundering and Financing Measures.
According to MONEYVAL 's progress report, published on Thursday, the Cypriot authorities implemented some compliance improvement measures, but did not do so in time for them to be assessed at this stage. A number of other shortcomings are also still to be addressed.
It is recalled that in its initial report in 2019 MONEYVAL considered that Cyprus fully or to a large extent complied with 37 of the 40 FATF recommendations in total, and asked the authorities to report on progress in implementing the remaining recommendations (with which the Cyprus was judged to be partially compliant) in the context of an enhanced monitoring process.
The progress report, according to a relevant announcement, examines a series of legislative, regulatory and institutional measures implemented by the Cypriot authorities in relation to risk assessment and monitoring in the non-profit sector, as well as the evaluation of customer relations by correspondents. banks. It also assesses the ability of research authorities to monitor communications and apply cash delivery and negotiable delivery techniques within the bearer.
The progress report also assesses the implementation of the new international requirements for fictitious asset service providers as set out in a revised FATF Recommendation. The assessment of the implementation of this revised Recommendation by Cyprus has been downgraded from "compliance to a large extent" to "partial compliance".
The Cypriot authorities, he added, have taken a number of steps to implement these new FATF requirements, including the December 2021 issue of risk assessment related to money laundering and terrorist financing presented by fictitious assets and the relevant service providers. However, these measures were not taken in time to be evaluated in the progress report.
Consequently, Cyprus is deemed to "fully comply" with 16 of the 40 FATF recommendations, "largely comply" with 20 recommendations and "partially comply" with four recommendations (non-profit organizations, banking response, new technologies and powers of police and investigative authorities).
At the moment, it is stressed, there are no recommendations with which Cyprus is considered not to comply.
The progress report examines formal changes to the legislative, regulatory and institutional framework in Cyprus, but does not assess the extent to which these reforms have been effectively implemented, based on MONEYVAL's practices.
MONEYVAL, it is added, expects that each country will have faced most, if not all, of its shortcomings by the end of the third year since the adoption of the peer review report. Cyprus is therefore expected to inform MONEYVAL of further progress in implementing the pending recommendations in one year.
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