Angola has an institutional action plan to deal with inclusion on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) monitoring list, the director-general of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Gilberto Capessa, reported this Wednesday in Luanda.
The official was speaking to the press at the end of the meeting of the Supervision and Coordination Committee of the National System for the Prevention and Combat of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism.
He stressed that Angola has not returned to the FATF grey list, as has been said in recent times.
The director of the UIF announced that the aforementioned action plan provides for the carrying out of national and sectoral risk assessment exercises, the strengthening of the technical and professional capacity of Angolan staff and the strengthening of the current legislative framework in matters of preventing and combating money laundering, the financing of terrorism, the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other organised transnationa
l crime.
“What happened is that Angola is on a reinforced monitoring list, which is different from the grey list”, he stressed, highlighting that the FATF assessed the country looking at two components.
He referred to technical compliance with the legislative framework and effectiveness.
According to Gilberto Capessa, in this assessment, the FATF observed whether Angola has a legislative framework for preventing and combating money laundering, financing terrorism and the proliferation of weapons.
The assessment was made in order to ‘see whether the designed framework was implemented and whether it is producing the expected results’, he said.
When asked about sanctions for a country on the monitoring list, he said there would be no financial consequences for Angola.
The official recalled that the country had a set of 87 deficiencies, improved 70 and remained 17, of which around 50% to 60% are already in progress.
The supervisory committee meeting was chaired by the Minister of State for Economic Coordin
ation, José de Lima Massano, and analysed the FATF’s decision on Angola’s mutual evaluation process, as well as its plan and the action of national institutions aimed at addressing the remaining 17 deficiencies.
The Angolan State recently reiterated to the FATF its firm commitment to building an effective system to prevent and combat money laundering, terrorist financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as any other forms of transnational organized crime.
Source: Angola Press News Agency
