Türkiye 'substantially’ completed action plan to be removed from Financial Action Task Force’s grey list: Watchdog

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced Friday that "Türkiye has substantially completed" steps for its removal from the watchdog’s grey list.

A statement stressed that Türkiye made a high-level political commitment to work with the force in October 2021 to strengthen the effectiveness of its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing Terrorism (CFT) systems.

"At its February 2024 Plenary, the FATF made the initial determination that Türkiye has substantially completed its action plan and warrants an on-site assessment to verify the implementation of the AML/CFT reforms has begun and is being sustained, that the, and that the necessary political commitment remains in place to sustain implementation in the future," said the statement.

"Türkiye has made key reforms, including: (1) enhancing its approach to risk-based AML/CFT supervision; (2) taking steps to ensure sanctions for AML/CFT breaches and beneficial ownership requirements are dissuasive; (3) enhancing resources for its FIU [financial intelligence unit] and the use of financial intelligence produced; (4) undertaking more complex ML [money laundering] investigations and prosecutions in line with risks; (5) improving its asset recovery system; (6) prioritising TF investigations, prosecutions and confiscations related to UN-designated groups; (7) enhancing its implementation of targeted financial sanctions for terrorism financing; and (8) enhancing outreach to a broad range of NPOs [non-profit organization] and taking steps to ensure that supervision of NPOs is risk-based and does not disrupt or discourage legitimate NPO activity, such as fundraising," it added

Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister, Mehmet Simsek, said Friday that the process to remove Türkiye from the FATF grey list has reached its final stage.

He stressed that the task force decided that Türkiye had completed all the items of an action plan meant to further strengthen AFL and CFT systems.