Mutual Evaluation of Finland

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English

French

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Mutual Evaluation Report of Finland

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MER Finland full.pdf
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2 MB
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Mutual Evaluation of Finland

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has completed an assessment of the implementation of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) standards in Finland. Among its major findings were:

  • Finland has a good legal structure to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The money laundering offence established in 2003 is broad, as is the terrorist financing offence. There have been few convictions for money laundering and none for terrorist financing.
  • While provisions are in place to allow restraint, confiscation and recovery of the proceeds of crime in most situations, the mechanism for freezing terrorist assets is incomplete.
  • Overall, the Finnish FIU – the Money Laundering Clearing House – is effective. It is the focal point for Finnish AML/CFT efforts.
  • The preventive system addresses customer identification and other MAL/CFT obligations and applies to a range of financial institutions and most of the designated non-financial businesses and professions as defined by the FATF. It does not however incorporate customer due diligence requirements with respect to beneficial ownership or legal arrangements and no provisions have been implemented with respect to politically exposed persons or correspondent banking relationships.
  • Supervision is generally effective for the banking and insurance sectors by weak or non-existent for many types of designated non-financial businesses and professions.
  • Finland is currently in the process of amending the primary AML/CFT legislation and regulations to further strengthen its AML/CFT system.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact the FATF Secretariat (tel: +33 1 45 24 79 45, fax: +33 1 44 30 61 37, email: contact@fatf-gafi.org); 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, FRANCE.

 

This mutual evaluation was conducted using the FATF Recommendations as published in October 2004, and the 2004 Methodology for Assessing Compliance with the FATF 40 Recommendations and FATF 9 Special Recommendations.