Samoa's measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing

The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) completed its assessment of Samoa's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) system. The assessment is a comprehensive review of the effectiveness of Samoa's AML/CFT system and its level of compliance with the FATF Recommendations. 

The report was formally adopted by at the APG Annual Meeting in July 2015.  The findings of this assessment have also been reviewed and endorsed by the FATF. 

Samoa has significantly increased its overall levels of technical compliance with the FATF Recommendations since the 2006 assessments. However, further improvements, some substantial, remain. 

Samoa has received strong results in relation to international co-operation and moderate results in relation to a number of areas, including risk, policy and co-ordination and preventive measures. Despite some measures being in place, it has only low levels of effectiveness in supervision, use of financial intelligence, money laundering investigation and prosecution.  Samoa has no measures in place for proliferation financing financial sanctions.