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The European Union (EU) has further broadened its sanctions targeting Russia to increase pressure on its government, as the fall of its ally in Syria weakens Moscow’s geopolitical position. EU ministers have now sanctioned Chinese suppliers of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Russian crude oil suppliers and an airline, as well as companies alleged to be spreading disinformation in Africa and elsewhere.…

A strengthening domestic cheese market is expanding capacity for Czechia dairy manufacturers, who may use this additional production to boost export sales. Czechia may be a small European country but it is a significant cheese exporter, with more than half its cheese production sold abroad, according to Jiří Kopáček, of the Czech-Moravian Dairy Association (ČMSM).…

The Basel Institute on Governance has welcomed a gradual improvement in AML/CFT technical compliance with FATF recommendations but has warned governments’ progress in improving effectiveness remains sluggish.

Its 13th edition of the Basel AML Index assessed164 countries, with Myanmar, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) receiving the highest AML/CFT risk scores, with San Marino, Iceland and Finland the lowest (1).…

The European micro-states of Andorra and San Marino have signed an association agreement with the European Union (EU), which will more tightly integrate these small countries with the EU’s AML/CFT policies, programmes and legislation (1).

Both the Pyrenees principality (in 2011) and the Italian enclave republic (in 2012) had already struck monetary agreements with the EU, which allowed them to use the Euro and involved commitments to adopt “through direct transposition or possibly equivalent actions…implementing the EU legal acts [on] the prevention of money laundering” (2) (3). …

Taiwan’s sovereignty as the Republic of China may remain unrecognised by all but 12 countries (including the Vatican State) (1), but it is a full member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) and has been making significant progress on AML/CFT.…

Autonomous Chinese gambling centre Macao has been responding to pressure from Beijing to tighten controls on gaming, amidst ongoing concerns that the special administrative region (SAR) is a hub for dirty money, washing through its casinos.

The Macanese government expects its tiny peninsular and associated islands of 33.3 square kilometres to generate gross gaming revenues of Macao Patacas MOP216 billion (USD27 billion) in 2024, up from MOP183.1billion (USD22.8 billion), recovering from a Covid-19 induced slump (1).…

Romania uncovered EUR419 million’s worth of fraud associated with European Union (EU) spending programmes in 2023, detailed reports issued by the European Commission have revealed. The major spike in swindles, far above levels reported by other EU member states, were inflated especially by two sets of swindles associated with the EU Cohesion Fund, the bloc’s main regional development scheme, each accounting for around EUR168 million (2).…

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) ambitious plans to reform its universities and higher education system are progressing steadily, although faced with challenges. HE administrators and government officials are now working through the requirements of the new system having received a December 2022 decree establishing the grade designations of graduates for the new License-Master-Doctorate (LMD) system.…

Venezuela, whose July presidential election has been contested by its political opposition as fraudulent, is facing an increase in financial controls having been grey listed by FATF this June (2024). This was over failures to respond to the global body’s requests for improvements in AML/CFT.…

Uganda may have been removed from the FATF grey list this past February (2024), but its FIU has told MLB it knows more AML, CFT and CFP work is ahead. The east African country had been grey listed since 2020. After de-listing, FATF said in a communiqué it “welcomes Uganda’s significant progress in improving its AML/CFT regime”.…