Title: Slovenia’s Progress in Financial Crime Reporting: Moderate Improvements, Persistent Deficiencies

MONEYVAL’s Assessment of Slovenia’s Efforts in Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (ML/TF)

The European anti-money laundering body, MONEYVAL, has released a new report on Slovenia’s anti-ML/TF measures ¹. Despite some improvements, significant deficiencies persist, particularly concerning the criminalization of terrorism financing.

Assessing Risks and Implementing Corrective Measures

Slovenia has made progress in assessing and addressing ML/TF risks ¹. Their upgraded status from “partially compliant” to “largely compliant” in this area reflects this progress. Authorities have:

• Expanded national ML/TF risk assessment to cover sectors like virtual assets and non-profit organizations
• Developed new action plans to mitigate identified risks
• Increased staff at the Office to Fight Money Laundering (Urad za preprečevanje pranja denarja in financevanja terorizma - UPPP) in high-risk areas

Ongoing Challenges: Criminalization of Terrorism Financing

Despite these advancements, Slovenia still faces significant legislative gaps in the criminalization of terrorism financing ¹. These deficiencies impede the country’s ability to fully address international expectations as outlined in the mutual evaluation report, adopted in June 2017 ¹.

Compliance Enhancing Procedures (CEPs)

In response to these ongoing issues, MONEYVAL has initiated Compliance Enhancing Procedures (CEPs) with Slovenia ¹. This process includes:

1. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe sending a letter to Slovenian authorities requesting the necessary corrective measures
2. Slovenia being subjected to enhanced follow-up
3. Regular reporting back to MONEYVAL on the progress of their anti-ML/TF measures

Slovenia is expected to provide an update on their progress within one year.

Key Findings

• Slovenia has made some improvements in addressing ML/TF risks.
• Persistent deficiencies in the criminalization of terrorism financing remain.
• MONEYVAL has initiated Compliance Enhancing Procedures to address these shortcomings.

[Date: June 10, 2022]