Through the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) joint project “Enhancing capabilities of Bulgarian authorities to effectively mitigate money laundering and terrorist financing risks”, the Economic Crime and Cooperation Division is assisting Bulgarian authorities with enhancing their national AML/CFT framework to effectively mitigate money laundering and terrorism financing risks. This effort represents a follow-up to the previous cooperation on conducting the National Money Laundering/Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment in Bulgaria (NRA). The project started on 17 July 2020 and is expected to last for 24 months.

Through tailored activities, the project seeks to contribute to:

• Enhancing the understanding of AML/CFT risks affecting Bulgaria;
• The development and implementation of effective AML/CFT risk mitigation mechanisms.

Areas of specific focus include the development of the NRA Action Plan, update to Bulgaria’s National ML/TF Risk Assessment (NRA), high-risk sectoral risk assessments, and regulation of virtual assets and virtual assets service providers.

The total project budget 458,889 Euros.