Mutual Evaluation of Spain

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has assessed Spain’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) standards. Among the major findings of the report were:

• Spain has a comprehensive legal framework for combating money laundering.
• Its structures for dealing with terrorist financing are generally sound and effective.
• Requirements for customer identification are in place in financial institutions; however, these and some other preventive measures could be strengthened to fully meet FATF standards.
• Spain applies anti-money laundering measures to an extensive range of financial service providers and financial institutions, although some of these measures are not yet fully effective.
• Spain’s system for reporting suspicious financial transactions is adequate.
• The supervisory regime monitoring compliance with AML/CFT measures for financial institutions and other types of financial services could be improved by adding more resources.

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.