Financial Crime World

Mauritania’s Financial Crime Crackdown: A Look at the Islamic Republic’s 2nd Enhanced Follow-Up Report

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania has recently submitted its 2nd Enhanced Follow-Up Report (2nd EFUR) to the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF) as part of its commitment to improving its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regime. Following is a look into the Mauritanian report and the progress it has made in addressing AML/CFT shortcomings.

Mauritania’s MENAFATF 2nd EFUR: A Key Milestone

In the 2nd EFUR, Mauritania looks to re-rate its technical compliance with various recommendations and detail efforts made to rectify the issues discovered during its initial evaluation 1. This report follows the first report, submitted in April 2019 2, where Mauritania requested reassessments for six recommendations.

According to the 1st EFUR 3, Mauritania partially complied with ten recommendations:

  • Recommendations 11, 13, 17, and 18 were upgraded to ‘Largely Compliant’ rating
  • Recommendations 14 and 27 remained ‘Partially Compliant’

Ongoing Challenges and the Approval Process

The pandemic has posed significant challenges, leading to several decisions to continue the follow-up, including the FUR of Mauritania. If no further comments are received, the report will be considered approved; otherwise, it will be deferred for discussion at the next plenary meeting 1.

Evaluating Mauritania’s Progress: The 2nd EFUR

The 2nd EFUR focuses on the 32 recommendations Mauritania has requested reconsideration for, which have been amended since the onsite visit. Here is a brief look into the ratings of each recommendation in the report:

  • 32 Non-Compliant recommendations: Recommendations 1, 8, 10, 19, 24, 28, and 38
  • 48 Partially Compliant recommendations: Recommendations 4, 6, 12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 39, and 40

Progress on individual recommendations and the steps Mauritania has taken to address their shortcomings will be discussed in the following sections.

Mauritania’s Steps Towards Improvement: Recommendation 1 (Assessing Risks and Applying a Risk-Based Approach)

A significant challenge for Mauritania and a recommendation that remains ‘Non-Compliant’ is recommendation 1. This recommendation involves assessing risks and implementing a risk-based approach. Mauritania’s report highlights the need to address the following areas:

  1. Mitigation measures
  2. Vulnerabilities in relation to terrorist financing
  3. Effectiveness of the risk assessment for various sectors

To address these issues, Mauritania has initiated a National Risk Assessment (NRA) process. The objectives of the NRA are as follows:

  1. Identify and assess AML/CFT risks
  2. Adopt a mechanism for sharing NRA results with concerned parties
  3. Support various sectors in applying the NRA findings

  1. “MENAFATF publishes the 2nd Enhanced Follow-Up Report for Mauritania” (accessed on November 30, 2020). Available at: https://www.menafatf.org/pages/news_item.aspx?IdNews=1019. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. “Mauritania requests re-ratings for 6 recommendations” (accessed on November 30, 2020). Available at: https://www.financialcrimes.law/mauritania-requests-re-ratings-6-recommendations/. ↩︎

  3. “Mauritania’s MENAFATF Initial Evaluation” (accessed on November 30, 2020). Available at: https://www.menafatf.org/pages/evaluation_report.aspx?IdCountry=15. ↩︎