Mauritius FATF Updates
Article Published on September 14, 2021
We communicated in one of our past publications1 the decision of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to carry out an on-site visit to Mauritius further to the country having substantially completed its action plan at technical level. The purpose of the visit will be to assess the
implemented measures outlined in the Progress Report submitted by the country in April 2021.
Prior to the arrival of the FATF delegates on 13 September 2021, Mauritius had submitted the relevant clarifications with regard to the ‘immediate outcomes’ from the latest Progress Report submitted in July 2021. It is crucial to highlight that Mauritius has reiterated on multiple occasions its commitment to address the deficiencies in its AML/CFT regime and has taken the necessary steps to consolidate the local legislative and regulatory framework.
Indeed, the recent upgrade to a more positive rating of three of the FATF Recommendations on Technical Compliance by the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) bears evidence of the sustained effort put in by the Government and concerned parties in reinforcing our regulatory framework:
• Recommendation 8 (Non-Profit Organisations): from Non-Compliant to Largely Compliant;
• Recommendation 24 (Transparency and Beneficial Ownership of Legal Persons): from Partially Compliant to Largely Compliant; and
• Recommendation 33 (Statistics): from Partially Compliant to Compliant.
Further to this re-rating, Mauritius is now Compliant or Largely Compliant in 39 out of the 40 Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
Recommendations on Technical Compliance with only Recommendation 15 (New Technologies) rated as Partially Compliant.
We remain confident that the progress achieved by Mauritius so far will be recognized by the FATF inspection team and that this will set the country on the road to its removal from the FATF Greylist, and an ensuing delisting from the EU Blacklist.
We further endeavor to keep our valued clients updated about the outcome of the FATF delegation visit.
1 Access our FATF Greylist/EU Blacklist newsflash here
