The second plenary of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), under the two-year Singaporean chairmanship of T. Raja Kumar, will be held from February 22-24 in Paris and will conclude the FATF week. The Kingdom, whose expectations for this second plenary session of the FATF are high, is counting on a probable exit from the gray list.
Delegates representing 206 global network members and observer organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, United Nations, World Bank (WB), Interpol and the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, will participate in meetings of the working group and plenary during FATF week.
They will also discuss assessments of measures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, as well as the progress made by certain jurisdictions identified as posing a risk to the financial system.
Morocco, which was targeted by this component, has been committed since February 2021, politically at a high level, to working with FATF and FATFIMOAN, of which it is a member, to improve the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime. It has therefore taken steps to remove itself from the supervision of the FATF, the jurisdiction which must deal with all or almost all the elements of its action plan.
This was then followed by a visit last month to the site to confirm that the implementation of the necessary legal, regulatory and/or operational reforms is underway, and that there is the political commitment and capacity institutional necessary to do so.
This is what happened last January when the Experts of the Financial Action Task Force visited Morocco, as agreed during the October 2022 plenary. They were then on a mission to assess the measures put in place. put in place by the Kingdom in order to verify the extent to which FATF recommendations are applied.
Some saw it as a very positive on-site visit, but you never know. Still, it smells good for Morocco, which would have assured and assumed the faith of the financial, judicial, governmental and other authorities who were called upon for this.
The Kingdom should nevertheless continue the work of implementing its action plan to remedy its strategic shortcomings. He is called upon according to FATF to improve risk-based control, by taking corrective measures and by imposing effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions in the event of non-compliance. It will also have to conduct a risk assessment on the misuse of any type of legal entity with the private sector and the competent authorities, sharing the results.
It will also be required to increase the diversity of suspicious transaction reports and put in place procedures for the seizure and confiscation of assets, as well as monitor and exercise effective control of the compliance of FIs and DNFBPs with the obligations relating to to SFCs.
On the other hand, it goes without saying that Morocco has respected its commitments to get out of the gray list and casually, this decisive field visit by the FATF evaluators would only be confirmation of the good road holding of the Kingdom, as is usually customary in such cases, which is a good omen in these hard times.