The worldwide Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has warned to “urge all jurisdictions to apply enhanced due diligence to business relations and transactions with Jamaica.”
The global financial regulatory agency voiced alarm that the Caribbean nation “failed to complete its action plan, which fully expired in January 2022” in a statement on its website.
“The FATF strongly urges Jamaica to demonstrate significant progress toward completing its action plan by October 2023, or the FATF will consider next steps,” according to the statement.
According to the statement, Jamaica has taken steps toward improvement “by ensuring that its definition of beneficial ownership is in line with the FATF Standards” following its 2020 “high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and CFATF to strengthen the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime.”
The FATF, on the other hand, is urging the country to work on “implementing its action plan to address its strategic deficiencies,” specifically “ensuring adequate, risk-based supervision in all DNFBP sectors and demonstrating that accurate and up-to-date basic and beneficial ownership information is available on a timely basis to competent authorities, and effective, proportionate, and dissuasive sanctions are applied.”
Barbados has also been cautioned by the FATF that it “will consider next steps if there is insufficient progress” on its action plan, which expires in April 2022.
“The FATF strongly encourages Barbados to make significant progress toward completing its action plan by October 2023.”
They praised Barbados for taking steps to strengthen its AML/CFT framework, including “demonstrating that accurate and up-to-date beneficial ownership information is available on a timely basis and pursuing repatriation and sharing of confiscated assets with other countries.”
They did, however, caution the government to “work on implementing its action plan to address its strategic deficiencies by demonstrating that the levels of suspicious activity reporting by certain reporting entities are in line with the risks.”
