The Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) has published follow-up reports on North Macedonia and Romania reassessing their technical compliance with a number of the 40 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations.
In its follow-up report on North Macedonia, MONEYVAL concludes that the country has made progress in strengthening its legal and institutional framework to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, but notes that further efforts are needed to address remaining shortcomings.
The report highlights improvements in the country's legal and institutional framework, particularly concerning the FATF recommendations covering wire transfers, internal controls and oversight of foreign branches and transparency regarding the true owners of trusts and similar legal arrangements. North Macedonia now has 31 FATF recommendations rated as compliant or largely compliant and nine rated as partially compliant.
MONEYVAL finds that Romania has made limited progress in addressing technical compliance deficiencies affecting the application of FATF recommendations on targeted financial sanctions, virtual assets and virtual assets service providers, and statistics, and still needs to address moderate shortcomings.
In its follow-up report, MONEYVAL continues to rate Romania as compliant or largely compliant with 25 recommendations and partially compliant with 15 recommendations.
Both countries remain under MONEYVAL's enhanced follow-up procedure.
