Australia’s progress in strengthening measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing

Paris, 8 November 2018 – As a result of Australia’s progress in strengthening its framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since their 2015 mutual evaluation, the FATF has re-rated the country on 7 of the 40 Recommendations. 

Australia has been in an enhanced follow-up process, following the adoption of the FATF-APG mutual evaluation, which assessed the effectiveness of Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) measures and the country’s compliance with the FATF Recommendations. In line with the FATF Procedures for mutual evaluations, Australia has reported back to the FATF on the progress it has made to strengthen its AML/CFT framework.

This report analyses Australia’s progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in the mutual evaluation report.

To reflect this progress, the FATF has re-rated Australia on the following Recommendations:

15 – New Technologies from largely compliant to compliant
19 - Higher-risk countries from partially compliant to largely compliant
30 – Responsibilities of law enforcement and investigative authorities from largely compliant to compliant
32 – Cash couriers from largely compliant to compliant
36 – International instruments from largely compliant to compliant

The report also looks at whether Australia’s measures meet the requirements of FATF Recommendations that have changed since their 2015 mutual evaluation, taking into account any new measures since the mutual evaluation. The FATF has re-rated Australia on the following Recommendations:

5 – Terrorist financing offence from largely compliant to compliant
8 – Non-profit organisations from non compliant to largely compliant

The FATF agreed to maintain the partially compliant rating for Recommendation 18 and the compliant rating for Recommendations 7 and 21.

Mutual Evaluation of Australia - 2015