FATF 34th Plenary 1st Session Results
Inclusion of Countries Subject to 'Regular Follow-up Review'
South Korea's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing management level was evaluated as Grade 1, the highest among three grades.
The Financial Intelligence Unit of the Financial Services Commission announced on the 27th that it attended the 34th 1st Plenary Meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held at the OECD headquarters in Paris, France, from the 21st to the 25th, together with the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and produced this result. Discussions on preventing money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing were also conducted at the plenary meeting.
In 2020, FATF conducted an international standard compliance evaluation (the 4th mutual evaluation) of South Korea and pointed out the imposition of anti-money laundering obligations on designated non-financial businesses and professions as a top priority. At that time, South Korea was assigned Level 2 (Enhanced Follow-up), which is below the highest Level 1 (Regular Follow-up).
At this plenary meeting, South Korea reported on the follow-up measures taken regarding the recommendations for improvement from the 4th mutual evaluation. The plenary recognized South Korea's follow-up achievements and adopted a follow-up report incorporating South Korea into the regular follow-up countries. According to the mutual evaluation results, countries are categorized into one of regular follow-up, enhanced follow-up, or ICRG monitoring. ICRG monitored countries must report at every FATF plenary. Enhanced follow-up countries report every 1 to 1.5 years. Regular follow-up countries report every 3 years. Thus, South Korea has completed the 4th round follow-up and can now begin preparations for the 5th round mutual evaluation.
Additionally, FATF decided to maintain Iran and North Korea as 'High-Risk Jurisdictions subject to Countermeasures' and Myanmar as a 'High-Risk Jurisdiction subject to Enhanced Customer Due Diligence.' Among these, while acknowledging some compliance progress by Myanmar since the last plenary, FATF stated that if Myanmar fails to demonstrate further progress by the next plenary, countermeasures may be imposed.
In response, Asia-Pacific member countries including South Korea and Japan welcomed Myanmar's progress as a developing country lacking sufficient resources to meet standards, emphasizing that this progress indicates Myanmar authorities need more time.
Regarding 'Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring,' out of the existing 21 countries, one country (Senegal) was removed, and four countries (Algeria, Angola, C?te d'Ivoire, Lebanon) were newly added, bringing the total to 24 countries on the list. The newly added four countries are subject to enhanced customer due diligence (EDD) and other measures conducted by financial institutions under anti-money laundering regulations.
Furthermore, FATF revised the National Risk Assessment guidelines. The revised guidelines reflect experiences and lessons accumulated since FATF first published them in 2013. In particular, they were completed based on the experiences of over 90 countries worldwide with varying levels of money laundering and terrorist financing risk environments, aiming to help low-capacity countries better understand and mitigate their illicit finance risks.
The next plenary meeting is scheduled to be held at the OECD headquarters in France in February next year. Park Kwang, head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, urged member countries to continuously cooperate so that the Busan Train (FATF training organization), an important asset of FATF and the Korean government, can be further activated by diversifying educational programs.
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