BRUSSELS: The European Union is preparing an overhaul of its listing of countries that pose money-laundering risks, an EU confidential document shows, a review that could allow Saudi Arabia to be moved to a new greylist after having been briefly blacklisted.
The EU executive added the kingdom in February to its blacklist of 23 jurisdictions that represent a threat to the bloc because of lax controls against terrorism financing and money laundering but the list was struck down by EU states after Saudi pressure.
Fearful of the economic impact of that listing, European governments led by Britain and France said the EU executive commission had given no chance to Riyadh and other listed states to address concerns.
Required by EU rules to adopt a list, the commissioner in charge of the issue — Czech liberal Vera Jourova — went back to the drawing board and has now come up with a revised process to list countries.
Instead of directly blacklisting those with shortfalls, the new process would be based on a “staged approach”, under which risk countries would need to commit to changing their rules and practices by set deadlines, the document seen by Reuters said.
This would effectively produce a grey list of jurisdictions that would be blacklisted only if they failed to apply required reforms, a European official told Reuters.
The commission had found in February that Riyadh had serious shortcomings in its anti-money laundering framework but the kingdom has since then engaged in reforms that could justify its exclusion from the blacklist, the official said.
On the other hand, Saudi’s full delisting would not appear credible “as it would be difficult for them to have all their issues fixed in half a year”, the official added, referring to the shortfalls the EU highlighted in February.
The new blacklist would include all the high-risk jurisdictions monitored by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body responsible for countering money laundering, the official said. The FATF list currently comprises 14 states, including Panama, the Bahamas, Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and North Korea.
In June, Saudi Arabia became a full FATF member. It had, for a long time, been denied membership for not meeting anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing criteria.
When it comes to exposing jurisdictions that could favour tax evasions, the EU already applies a staged approach, with a black and a greylist. It has an 11-strong blacklist. Dozens of states are in the tax greylist.
