Search Results for: Dominican Republic

The government of the Himalayan republic of Nepal, squeezed between Asian giants India and China, has passed amendments to 20 laws affecting AML/CFT, as it seeks to avoid a re-grey-listing by FATF (1).

Nepal left the FATF grey list in 2014, after a six-year-stay, but a critical mutual evaluation report (MER) from the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) called for more action (2).…

Free trade zones (FTZ) have long been identified as having potential vulnerabilities for ML/TF/PF. And while they are not a key priority for FATF as it assesses the criteria for its fifth mutual evaluation round (MER5), given FTZs are still growing in number, international concern about their criminal money risks persists.…

A UK High Court judge has condemned Emirati-Lebanese shipbuilder Privinvest over its role in the ‘tuna bond’ corruption scandal that landed Mozambique with USD2 billion in hidden debts, crashing its previously buoyant economy in 2016 when it defaulted on an IMF loan.…

European Union (EU) member states have been adapting to the new legal guidance on access to their national registers of ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) following the November 2022 ruling (1) at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and a new EU directive published June 19 (2024).…

A Financial Action Task Force (FATF) paper has warned that governments are failing to increase AML/CFT controls on virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (VASPs), with only 25% of those surveyed fully or largely compliant with FATF guidance (1).

Of these 130 jurisdictions assessed under the latest mutual evaluation reports and follow up checks, the 75% proportion of those partially or not compliant with FATF recommendation 15 on VASPs and other new tech, “is identical to that of April 2023…and shows negligible improvement,” said FATF.…

A lack of infrastructure, government support, foreign trade barriers and weak domestic demand have been hampering the development of the wool industry in central Asia. Limited business opportunities are forcing farmers to focus on breeding sheep for lamb and mutton meat production, especially in Kazakhstan, the region’s wool potential powerhouse, rather than on rearing merino for wool.…

The director of business development of textiles and logistics major the Central American Group believes that CAFTA-DR trade agreement is playing a such a significant role in knitwear job creation in Central America, it could help reduce the wave of illegal migration to the United States.…

The European Union (EU) Council of Ministers has given its final approval to an EU directive insisting that EU member states criminalise and impose dissuasive punishments on the deliberate evasion of sanctions (1).

This law has been drafted amidst rising concern that Russia and Russians are effectively bypassing the slew of sanctions ordered following their country’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2).…

Accountants and their clients within the European Union (EU) have had to avoid trading with an increasing number of sanctioned individuals and companies, especially in Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine. Now, with sanctions evasion being criminalised across the EU under a new proposed law, the risk of exposure to sanctions for EU companies and their accountants and auditors has risen further – both when dealing with actors subverting these measures and when undermining sanctions themselves, of course.…

The only university of the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, or Western Sahara, continues to teach and graduate students, despite the military stalemate that has persisted before and since its founding in 2012, which has left Morocco controlling 80% of the territory.…