Financial Crime World

Sao Tome and Principe: Progress in Financial Compliance, but Challenges Remain

Improvements in Financial Compliance

The government of Sao Tome and Principe has made significant strides in improving its financial compliance, according to a recent assessment by the international community. The country’s efforts have led to improvements in several areas, including:

  • Assessing risk and applying a risk-based approach: Sao Tome and Principe was rated Largely Compliant (LC) in this area.
  • National cooperation and coordination: The country also received an LC rating for national cooperation and coordination.

Challenges Remain

Despite these improvements, Sao Tome and Principe still faces challenges in several key areas. The country struggled to meet the FATF’s requirements in:

  • Confiscation and provisional measures
  • Terrorist financing offence
  • Target financial sanctions related to proliferation
  • Customer due diligence
  • Record keeping
  • Politically exposed persons
  • Correspondent banking
  • Money or value transfer services
  • New technologies
  • Wire transfers
  • Reliance on third parties
  • Internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries
  • Higher-risk countries
  • Reporting of suspicious transactions
  • DNFBPs: Customer due diligence
  • DNFBPs: Other measures
  • Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons
  • Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements
  • Regulation and supervision of financial institutions
  • Regulation and supervision of DNFBPs
  • Cash couriers
  • Statistics
  • Guidance and feedback
  • Sanctions
  • International instruments

Non-Compliance in Key Areas

Sao Tome and Principe was also rated Non-Compliant (NC) for:

  • Non-profit organisations
  • Money laundering offence
  • Confiscation and provisional measures
  • Terrorist financing offence
  • Target financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing
  • Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons
  • Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements
  • Regulation and supervision of DNFBPs
  • Cash couriers
  • Statistics
  • Guidance and feedback

Compliance in Other Areas

On the other hand, Sao Tome and Principe received Compliant (C) ratings for:

  • Financial institution secrecy laws
  • Customer due diligence
  • Record keeping
  • Internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries
  • Powers of supervisors
  • Law enforcement and investigative authorities’ responsibilities
  • Law enforcement and investigative authorities’ powers
  • Mutual legal assistance
  • Mutual legal assistance: freezing and confiscation
  • Extradition
  • Other forms of international cooperation

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Sao Tome and Principe has shown improvement in some areas of financial compliance, it still lags behind in several key areas. The country needs to continue working towards meeting the FATF’s requirements to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, and to ensure that its financial system is transparent and secure.