Iran and North Korea Are High-Risk Countries
South Korea has been designated as a regular follow-up review country, the highest rating, in the mutual evaluation by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
On the 27th, the Financial Services Commission announced that five institutions, including the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), attended the 34th 1st FATF plenary meeting held from the 21st to the 25th at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris, France.
At this plenary meeting, South Korea reported the follow-up measures taken on the recommendations for improvement from the 4th mutual evaluation. In response, FATF recognized South Korea's follow-up achievements and adopted a follow-up review report incorporating South Korea as a regular follow-up review country.
Additionally, FATF announced sanctions against countries that failed to comply with international standards. As in the June plenary meeting, Iran and North Korea were maintained as "high-risk jurisdictions subject to countermeasures," and Myanmar was maintained as a "high-risk jurisdiction subject to countermeasures" (enhanced customer due diligence).
FATF acknowledged that Myanmar had made progress in meeting the standards since the last plenary meeting but decided to consider imposing countermeasures if Myanmar fails to demonstrate results by the next plenary meeting in February next year.
Regarding the "enhanced follow-up countries," which is one level below the high-risk jurisdictions subject to countermeasures, Senegal was removed, and Algeria, Angola, C?te d'Ivoire, and Lebanon were newly added. Accordingly, these four countries are now subject to enhanced customer due diligence (EDD) conducted by financial institutions in accordance with relevant regulations.
Furthermore, FATF revised the national risk assessment guidelines to help member countries understand money laundering and terrorist financing risks and allocate resources starting from vulnerable areas, and decided to smoothly proceed with the 5th round of mutual evaluations.
The next plenary meeting is scheduled to be held at the OECD headquarters in France in February next year.
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