The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog and policy making body, in which more than 200 countries and jurisdictions are members.
FATF High-risk jurisdictions have significant strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and financing of proliferation. If a country is in FATF blacklist, international banks may refuse payment transactions from these countries.
There are two types of list you should know about, the first is blacklist and grey list.
Blacklist
FATF during its meeting on 23 Oct 2020 has identified list of high risk jurisdictions on blacklist. Banks and corporations must take call of action to perform extensive due diligence from clients in these countries and have to apply counter measures to protect international financial system
As of Oct 2020, only 2 countries are on the blacklist.
- Iran
- North Korea
Greylist
FATF during its meeting on Oct 2020, has identified these 16 countries are subjected to increased monitoring (grey list). These countries have to resolve deficiencies in AML/CFT quickly.
FATF does not call for enhanced due diligence measures to be applied to these jurisdictions, but encourages its members to do their own risk analysis.
- Albania
- The Bahamas
- Barbados
- Botswana
- Cambodia
- Ghana
- Jamaica
- Mauritius
- Myanmar
- Nicaragua
- Pakistan
- Panama
- Syria
- Uganda
- Yemen
- Zimbabwe
