Dominica Receives Mixed Rating on Financial Sanctions and Enforcement
The Caribbean island nation of Dominica has received a mixed rating from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its latest mutual evaluation report. While some areas have been deemed compliant, others require improvement.
Compliance Highlights
According to the report, Dominica is largely compliant in several key areas, including:
- Assessing risk and applying a risk-based approach
- National cooperation and coordination
- Money laundering offense, confiscation, and provisional measures
- Terrorist financing offense
- Customer due diligence
- Record keeping
- Reliance on third parties
- Internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries
- Reporting of suspicious transactions
- Tipping-off and confidentiality
- DNFBPs: customer due diligence, transparency, and beneficial ownership of legal persons
- Regulation and supervision of financial institutions
- Powers of supervisors
- Regulation and supervision of DNFBPs
- Financial intelligence units
- Responsibilities of law enforcement and investigative authorities
- Cash couriers
- Statistics, guidance, and feedback
- Sanctions
- International instruments
- Mutual legal assistance
- Other forms of international cooperation
Areas for Improvement
However, the report also notes that Dominica is partially compliant in several areas, including:
- Targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing
- Targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation
- DNFBPs: other measures
- Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements
- Powers of law enforcement and investigative authorities
- Mutual legal assistance: freezing and confiscation
Non-Compliance with New Technologies
Additionally, the report notes that Dominica is non-compliant in one area:
- New technologies
The FATF’s recommendations are designed to promote international cooperation in combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. The organization’s mutual evaluation process assesses countries’ implementation of these recommendations and provides guidance for improvement.
Commitment to Improvement
Dominica has committed to implementing the necessary improvements and will be subject to further monitoring and evaluation by the FATF.