Nicaragua and Pakistan were removed from the gray list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body that monitors the measures taken by States to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.
The decision was announced this Friday, October 21, after a two-day plenary session in Paris, France, in which the Nicaraguan “progress”, but concerns were reported “about the possible misapplication of the standards, resulting in the suppression of the non-profit sector.”
The president of FATFRaja Kumar, stressed that Nicaragua “has taken steps” to correct the failures that had been detected and to comply with the action plan that was set for it in February 2020. However, national experts warned that the alleged advances used by the organization occur in a context of manipulation of the local legal framework to achieve the closure of civil society spaces.
According to a count by CONFIDENTIAL, Between 2018 and last October 12, the Nicaraguan regime has stripped 2,381 organizations of their legal status, accusing them of failing to comply with the national regulatory framework such as the registration, for example, of NGOs as “foreign agents” in the Ministry of the Interior, legislation created in 2020 that is known locally as the Putin law.
“The worse off we are, the more awards and removing Nicaragua from the gray list gives it a letter of introduction that will allow it to unlock international loans for more repression.
The message of FATF The repressive laws are very well applied”, commented a specialist on condition of anonymity, who pointed out that the closure of NGOs does not minimize the risk of money laundering, also caused in Nicaragua by the general lack of transparency.
The former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States, Arturo McFields Yescas, also reacted in the same way.
#THE LAST LAVADO reward the dictatorship of #Nicaragua Despite the fact that Ortega has closed more than 2,000 NGOs and lacks transparency, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed the dictatorship from its gray list for making supposed progress! Shameful
– Arturo McFields Yescas (@ArturoMcfields) October 21, 2022
Tanzania and Mozambique on the gray list
The other side of the coin is the DRC, Tanzania and Mozambique, which become part of the 22 jurisdictions on that gray list that, according to the official definition, “are actively working with the FATF to correct strategic deficiencies” in their regimes. fight against money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Read: Migob cancels another hundred NGOs between nationals and foreigners
Also on that list are Albania, Barbados, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Haiti, Jamaica, Jordan, Mali, Morocco, Panama, the Philippines, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates.
Kumar issued a warning to Panama because, although there has been progress with regard to the device against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, in particular with “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” sanctions, it has not complied with several measures of its action plan, for which he had been given a deadline of January 2021.
In practice, he has been given an ultimatum to complete that action plan by February 2023.
Otherwise, the advisability of the members of the FATF and the rest of the jurisdictions reinforce the supervision, with what this supposes of restriction of the business relations and the transactions with Panama. (With information from EFE)
