Montenegro has made a significant progress in improving its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing framework, concludes the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) in a follow-up report released today.
This report analyses what has been done by Montenegro to address the deficiencies identified in the evaluation report published in December 2023. Where sufficient progress has been made, MONEVAL has re-rated the level of compliance.
MONEYVAL finds that Montenegro has sufficiently addressed shortcomings under several Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations. As a result, the country has been upgraded to the “largely compliant” level on twelve recommendations – those on targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing, on customer due diligence and other preventive measures, new technologies, regulation and supervision of financial institutions, as well as maintaining statistics relevant to its anti-money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT) system (Recommendations 6, 7, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 26 and 33).
MONEYVAL notes, in particular, significant changes made to the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing, amendments to other legislative acts, adoption of rulebooks.
Montenegro has also made some progress on FATF recommendations regarding non-profit organisations, measures vis-à-vis higher risk countries, transparency of legal persons and arrangements, regulation and supervision of designated non-financial businesses and professions (such as casinos, real estate agents, dealers in precious metals and stones, lawyers, notaries, other independent legal professionals, accountants and trust and company service providers,) as well as on sanctions (Recommendations 8, 19, 24, 25, 28 and 35). As a result of the progress made by Montenegro on the recommendation 8 (combatting the abuse of non-profit organisations), the country has been upgraded to the “partly compliant” level.
However, the progress was not sufficient to grant an upgrade on recommendations 19 (on higher-risk countries), 24 (on transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons), 25 (on transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements) and 28 (on regulation and supervision of designated non-financial businesses and professions), and Montenegro remained rated “partially compliant” on them.
Overall, out of the 40 FATF recommendations, MONEVYAL rates Montenegro as:
- Compliant on two recommendations,
- Largely compliant on 31 recommendations,
- Partially compliant on seven recommendations.
None of the FATF recommendations are assessed as non-compliant.
Montenegro is expected to report back to MONEYVAL in one year’s time on progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures.
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The Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) is a Council of Europe monitoring body and a Financial Action Task Force-Style Regional Body which assesses compliance with the main international standards to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the effectiveness of their implementation. It comprises 35 jurisdictions, 32 of which are assessed solely by MONEYVAL.
