Basel ABL Index: Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Reduces in Mongolia
SocietyUlaanbaatar, November 29, 2023
/MONTSAME. Mongolia was put on FATF's gray list in
October 2019 and ranked 20th in the Basel AML Index. However, according to the
Basel Institute on Governance assessment in 2023, Mongolia's money laundering
and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risk score has decreased and it ranks 83rd out
of 152 countries.
The Basel AML Index provides risk scores
based on the quality of a country's anti-money laundering and countering the
financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework and the results are presented in the
FATF Mutual Evaluation Report.
In recent years, Mongolia has made unprecedented progress in combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Mongolia is leading among the anti-money laundering groups in the Asia-Pacific region to be fully compliant and assessed as "compliant" and "largely compliant" on all 40 FATF technical recommendations. According to the Bank of Mongolia, the progress made by Mongolia will have a positive impact on other assessments and indexes for assessing the system of combating money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as cooperation with foreign banking and financial institutions.
The State Great Khural and the Cabinet's
support to combat money laundering and terrorist financing at all levels as
well as public and private organizations' prompt actions had a positive impact
on FAFT assessment. The Bank of Mongolia emphasized the necessity to focus on
the implementation and detection of crimes related to money laundering and
terrorist financing, expanding cooperation, quality of preventive measures
aimed at avoiding risks, and strengthening the capacity of human resources and
funding of organizations operating in this area.
In the Basel AML Index, the risk is
calculated using a special methodology, and the global average is estimated at
5.31. On this list, Haiti was ranked 1st as the country with the highest risk
of money laundering and terrorist financing, while Iceland was ranked 152nd as
the country with the lowest risk.
The Basel Institute on Governance is an
independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to countering corruption,
improving standards of governance and their activities, criminal law
enforcement, combating money laundering and terrorist financing, confiscation,
and return of illegal assets. It annually assesses risks of money laundering
and terrorist financing around the world and publishes the Basel AML Index.
Since there is no single index that
calculates money laundering and terrorist financing risk factors, countries,
governments, and private organizations often use the Basel AML Index to develop
their anti-money laundering and terrorist financing strategies and calculate
risks.
The Basel Institute has been publishing the
Basel AML Index annually since 2012.
It provides risk scores
based on data from 18 publicly available sources such as the Financial Action
Task Force (FATF), Transparency International, the World Bank and the World
Economic Forum.
The risk scores cover five domains
considered to contribute to a high risk of ML/TF:
1.
Quality
of AML/CFT Framework
2.
Bribery
and Corruption
3.
Financial
Transparency and Standards
4.
Public
Transparency and Accountability
5.
Legal
and Political Risks