MONEYVAL, the Council of Europe’s financial supervisory authority, has published the 2020 AML/CFT progress report for Albania. The report finds that Albania has not significantly improved its AML/CFT measures in line with the FATF Recommendations.
In Albania’s 2018 evaluation, MONEYVAL had identified deficiencies with technical compliance in the areas of targeted financial sanctions, transparency of legal arrangements, supervision of financial institutions and non-financial businesses and professions. In the 2020 evaluation, the authority noted that the country has implemented only a few positive steps since then to address the deficiencies in targeted financial sanctions. As such, Albania’s rating on the FATF Recommendation 7 has improved from ‘non-compliant’ to ‘partially compliant’.
On the other hand, Albania’s rating on the implementation of the FATF’s virtual assets Recommendation has suffered, going from ‘largely compliant’ to only ‘partially compliant’. Its ratings on all other FATF Recommendations have remained unchanged. Thus, MONEYVAL has decided to keep Albania in the enhanced follow-up procedure and re-evaluate its AML/CFT progress every year.
Source: Council of Europe