In light of Serbia’s progress in strengthening its framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since its mutual evaluation report in April 2016, MONEYVAL has re-rated the jurisdiction on ten Recommendations, nine of which were originally rated “partially compliant” or “non-compliant”.
Serbia was placed in MONEYVAL’s enhanced follow-up procedure based on the results of its mutual evaluation report, which assessed the effectiveness of Serbia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) measures and their compliance with the 40 Recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Serbia had previously submitted its first enhanced follow-up report in September 2017. In line with MONEYVAL’s rules of procedure, Serbia submitted a second follow-up report to MONEYVAL on the steps taken to strengthen its AML/CFT framework.
This follow-up report analyses Serbia’s progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in the mutual evaluation report. The report also looks at whether Serbia complies with the new requirements of those FATF Recommendations that have changed since the first follow-up report.
To reflect this progress, MONEYVAL has re-rated Serbia to “largely compliant” with Recommendations 1 (assessing risks and applying a risk-based approach), 7 (targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation), 10 (customer due diligence), 13 (correspondent banking), 19 (higher risk countries), 16 (wire transfers), 25 (transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements), 26 (regulation and supervision of financial institutions) and 35 (sanctions); and to “compliant” with Recommendation 12 (politically exposed persons).
The ratings for Recommendation 5 (Terrorist financing offence, originally rated as “largely compliant”), 8 (Non-profit organizations, originally rated as “partially compliant”), 18 (internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries, originally rated as “largely compliant”) and 21 (tipping-off and confidentiality, originally rated as “compliant”), the requirements of which changed since the first follow-up report, remain unchanged.
MONEYVAL decided that the Serbia will remain in enhanced follow-up and report back to MONEYVAL in December 2019 on further progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures.
