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

Paris, 3 September 2018 – As a result of Belgium’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 15 of the 40 Recommendations.

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

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

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

1 – Assessing risks & applying a risk-based approach
2 - National cooperation and coordination
10 – Customer due diligence
12 - Politically exposed persons
16 – Wire transfers
17 – Reliance on third parties
18 – Internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries
19 – Higher-risk countries
26 – Regulation and supervision of financial institutions
27 – Powers of supervisors
28 – Regulation and supervision of DNFBPs
33 - Statistics
35 - Sanctions

The report also looks at whether Belgium’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 agreed to rerate Recommendation 5 to Compliant (originally largely compliant), Recommendation 8 to Largely compliant (originally partially compliant), and to maintain the ratings of Partially Compliant for Recommendation 7 and Compliant for Recommendation 21.

The FATF welcomes the steps that Belgium has taken to improve its technical compliance with Recommendations 6, 7, 13, 14, 23, 34 and 40; however, the progress was insufficient to justify a re-rating of these Recommendations.

Belgium's measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing - April 2015.