The Paris-headquartered Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has released a detailed follow-up report rating the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as compliant with 15 of its 40 recommendations and largely compliant with a further 24.
The report set out the progress that the United Arab Emirates, member of FATF-Style Regional Body MENAFATF, has made in improving its level of compliance with the FATF standards, since its 2020 mutual evaluation.
It gave the jurisdiction no 'non-compliant' ratings and upgrades three of its 'partially compliant' ratings to ‘compliant' or ‘largely compliant'.
These are Recommendation 1, regarding risk assessment and implementing a risk-based approach; Recommendation 19, regarding high-risk countries; and Recommendation 29, regarding the country's Financial Intelligence Unit procedures and operations.
But the UAE was downgraded to partially compliant on Recommendation 15 regarding the regulation of virtual asset service providers, in common with many jurisdictions due to the evolving nature of the compliance of this complex area.
The UAE will continue to be on FATF's list of jurisdictions in what it calls "enhanced follow-up", where it will remain until it submits its fourth enhanced follow-up report to FATF, in April or May 2024.
