In January 2021, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) of Malta started gathering information about the primary reasons for the rejection of suspicious reports submitted by reporting entities. The reason for commencing this assessment was to evaluate the quality of reporting.
This assessment will help the FIAU to understand if a report was rejected automatically, due to selection of the incorrect report type, formatting issues, inclusion of incorrect or incomplete information or documentation, etc. An analysis of this information will help the FIAU to issue guidelines for reporting entities facing issues with their submissions.
The FIAU now requires reporting entities to submit suspicious transaction reports the same day when they detect or suspect ML/TF. Furthermore, in March 2021, the FIAU will introduce a system to delete draft suspicious reports after 2 weeks from initiation. This means that reporting entities must finalize their reports on time.