The Council of Europe’s AML authority MONEYVAL recently conducted its follow-up review of the Czech Republic. The report shows that the Czech Republic has significantly improved its AML/CFT measures though the efforts are still lacking in some areas.
The Czech Republic has been on MONEYVAL’s enhanced follow-up procedure since December 2018 because of numerous deficiencies that the authority had found back then. In its recent follow-up, MONEYVAL has ranked the Czech Republic higher on international compliance in three areas. The three areas are the institution of collaborative national AML/CFT efforts, improvement of AML/CFT policies against high-risk jurisdictions, and enhancement of transparency in bank-to-bank transactions. The Czech Republic has also effectively embraced the new international requirements related to virtual assets and their providers.
However, MONEYVAL found the Czech Republic’s efforts to be lacking when evaluating the country’s financial sanctions on terrorism and its mechanisms to track cross-border cash flow. The report found that the country was fully compliant with only 5 of the 40 FATF Recommendations on AML/CFT measures. It still shows some major deficiencies related to 11 FATF Recommendations. Weighing the improvements and deficiencies that the Czech Republic has made since the last evaluation, MONEYVAL has once again placed the Czech Republic in the enhanced follow-up process to encourage the country to improve its AML/CFT framework.
