Ghana returns to EU’s ‘dirty money’ list
Ghana is one of 12 countries in the world that the European Commission (EC) has found to have “strategic deficiencies in anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regime” which it says has the tendency to fuel related crimes.
The other countries are The Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cambodia, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar/Burma, Nicaragua, Panama and Zimbabwe.
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In a statement issued on May 7, the Commission said the AML/CFT regimes of Ghana and the 12 other countries “pose significant threats to the financial system of the European Union (EU).”
The statement was issued in Brussels, Belgium, and signed by the President of the Commission, Madam Ursula Von Der Leyen.
The inclusion of Ghana in the blacklist means that financial transactions from Ghana into the EU and vice versa would now receive extra scrutiny to ensure that they do not escape the “deficiencies” identified to the benefit of money launderers and terrorist financiers.
This is the second year in a row that Ghana has been added to the EU’s blacklist – a list of countries deemed to present systems that allow the flow of illicit money into and out of the EU – a 27-member political and monetary union.
In 2019, the commission listed Ghana and 22 other countries into a ‘dirty money’ list although the EU Parliament later rejected that list.
The EU Parliament explained in March 2019 that the process used to arrive at that conclusion was not “transparent and resilient.”
It added that that process, among other things, did not actively “incentivise affected countries to take decisive action while also respecting their right to be heard.”
It then called on the Commission to ensure a transparent process with clear and concrete benchmarks for countries that commit to undergo reforms so as to avoid being listed.
The EU Commission’s May 7 statement said following that directive, the Commission revised its methodology and found that the 12 countries in the world had strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT regime.
“These countries should be added to the list of the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1675 as countries presenting strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT regime that pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union.”
The statement explained that the key new elements in the revised methodology used for the current listing was that it had an increased interaction with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) listing process, it had an enhanced engagement with the third world countries and it reinforced consultation of Member States and the European Parliament.
It also explained that the commission had found that some of the 23 countries that were found to have “strategies deficiencies” in 2019 had improved upon then, leading to their removal from the list.
