Anti-money laundering officials in SL
Senior officials of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) style regional inter-governmental body, were in Colombo this week to help and ‘nudge’ the country to address the gaps in money laundering and related areas.
Sri Lanka is to undergo the third annual mutual evaluation by the APG in 18 months and the current visit by its officials is to ‘point Sri Lanka in the right direction’, officials told the Business Times on Thursday. In accordance with APG membership rules, on joining the APG, members commit to a mutual peer review system to determine the levels of compliance with the international Anti-Money Laundering / Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) standards. These peer reviews are referred to as “mutual evaluations”.
The APG’s visit comes a month after the Cabinet of Ministers approved the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism National Policy for 2023 to 2028 to prevent money laundering, financing of terrorism and other illegal activities. This will help implement the action plans that include the tasks to be performed by the respective institutions as a solution to identified weaknesses in preventing money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism.
APG members are committed to effectively implementing the international standards against money laundering, the financing of terrorism and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction etc.
Officials also said that the Construction Industry Development Authority (CIDA) has given a recommendation proposing a task force for the real estate industry to identify risks and traits of money laundering that will lead to establishing a regulatory authority after a big push by the anti-money laundering authority. This was prompted by the Financial Action Task Force listing the real estate sector as a high-risk area in money laundering in the country. In the 2022 Global Real Estate Transparency Index, based on a global survey of JLL and LaSalle’s extensive network of real estate market experts Sri Lanka ranks at 64 out of 96 countries.
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