Financial Crime World

Czech Republic Steps Up Efforts to Combat Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing

The Czech Republic has made significant strides in improving its measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, according to a follow-up report by the MONEYVAL committee published today. The country’s progress has led to an upgrade in its compliance ratings with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards.

Overview of Progress

In 2018, MONEYVAL had requested the Czech authorities to address several shortcomings under the enhanced follow-up procedure. The new assessment examines the country’s sanctioning regime for breaching preventative measures, non-profit organizations, reporting obligations, tipping-off and compliance of designated non-financial businesses and professions with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations.

Key Findings

  • MONEYVAL has evaluated a range of legislative, regulatory, and institutional measures implemented by the Czech Republic in these areas.
  • As a result, the country’s compliance ratings have been upgraded from “partially compliant” to “largely compliant” for five FATF recommendations and from “partially compliant” to “compliant” for one recommendation.

Remaining Deficiencies

Although the country has made commendable progress in addressing most technical compliance deficiencies, more efforts are still needed to fully implement international standards. The Czech Republic has achieved full compliance with six of the 40 FATF recommendations constituting the international AML/CFT standard. Minor deficiencies remain in the implementation of 29 recommendations where it has been found “largely compliant”. Five recommendations (targeted financial sanctions, virtual assets, cash couriers and maintenance of statistics) remain “partially complaint”.

Next Steps

The follow-up report does not assess the degree to which these reforms have been effectively implemented in practice due to MONEYVAL procedural limitations. The Czech Republic is expected to report back to MONEYVAL on further progress to strengthen its implementation of AML/CFT measures within one year.

Access the Full Report

A link to the full report can be found below.

[Insert link to full report]