Financial Crime World

Dominica Receives Mixed Assessment on Anti-Money Laundering Rules

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has released a report assessing Dominica’s compliance with anti-money laundering rules, highlighting both areas of strength and areas for improvement.

Compliance Areas

According to the report, Dominica is compliant in several key areas:

  • Having a money laundering offense and confiscation measures in place
  • National cooperation and coordination
  • Customer due diligence
  • Record keeping

These compliance areas demonstrate Dominica’s commitment to combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

Partial Compliance Areas

While Dominica has made some progress, it is partially compliant in the following areas:

  • Targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing
  • Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons and arrangements

To strengthen its measures, Dominica needs to improve its regulations and implementation in these areas.

Non-Compliance Areas

The report also identifies several key areas where Dominica is non-compliant:

  • Laws and regulations for financial institution secrecy, correspondent banking, and higher-risk countries
  • Reporting of suspicious transactions, tipping-off and confidentiality
  • DNFBPs’ customer due diligence

Dominica needs to address these issues to bring its anti-money laundering regime up to international standards.

Recommendations

The FATF report provides guidance on how Dominica can strengthen its anti-money laundering regime:

  • Improve national cooperation and coordination
  • Enhance customer due diligence and record keeping practices
  • Implement effective targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing
  • Ensure transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons and arrangements

By addressing these recommendations, Dominica can improve its anti-money laundering regime and meet international standards.

Conclusion

While Dominica has made progress in some areas, it still needs to address several key issues to bring its anti-money laundering regime up to international standards. The FATF report provides a roadmap for improvement, and we urge the government of Dominica to take necessary steps to strengthen its regulations and implementation.