Edited by Fabrizio Vedana

According to Moneyval, Member States must be more effective in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Alongside countries such as the Vatican and San Marino, which have passed the test and earned the status of cooperative jurisdictions in the fight against money laundering, others, such as Malta, Cyprus, and Hungary, are still subject to the enhanced monitoring procedure due to their insufficient level of compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations.

As is well known, Moneyval is the Council of Europe body that oversees the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Last June, after two lengthy inspections, this Authority promoted the Holy See and San Marino, certifying that the two countries have demonstrated a substantial level of effectiveness in their national anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing policies and in coordination, financial intelligence, confiscation, and investigations and prosecutions related to terrorist financing.

In each report, which comprises more than two hundred pages, Moneyval welcomes the overall picture of concrete measures and actions implemented to foster international cooperation, enabling the two states to provide mutual legal assistance in a generally timely and constructive manner.

The body also recognizes that the two countries have demonstrated a significant level of effectiveness in implementing national policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and in coordination, financial intelligence, confiscation, investigations and prosecutions for terrorist financing.

The report notes, however, that further improvements are needed to strengthen the supervisory system, preventive measures regarding the transparency of legal entities and legal arrangements, money laundering investigations and criminal proceedings and financial sanctions for terrorist financing.

It will now be up to the states that were "failed" or "referred to September" to demonstrate, during the next Moneyval inspection, that they have made similar progress to earn similar promotions; otherwise, they risk seeing enhanced anti-money laundering due diligence procedures applied to transactions with banks operating on their territory.