“France plays an active role in proposing designations to the EU and UN terrorist financing sanctions lists”, said the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body within the OECD dedicated to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF), in its mutual evaluation report on France published on Tuesday 17 May. France also plays a leading role on asset freezing through effective measures, according to the report.
The FATF addresses international AML standards and has 39 member countries that are regularly evaluated by their peers, as is the case for France in this report. Both in terms of technical and legal compliance and implementation efficiency, France has achieved excellent results and is among the most efficient countries in this field.
“Our system is robust and effective thanks to an essential balance between the repressive authorities and the preventive mechanism”, Didier Banquy, Chairman of the AML/CTF Advisory Board (COLB), assured the press on Monday 16 May.
According to the report, these good results are due to the introduction of new mechanisms, some of which are the result of the transposition into national law of the last two European directives, in particular the creation of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office, the important legislative introduction of the ‘simple presumption of the fraudulent origin of goods or income’, as well as the reform of the confiscation mechanism.
Furthermore, “the quality of mutual assistance in criminal matters provided by France is good”, given that most mutual assistance is inter-EU, magistrate to magistrate.
However, the FATF points out some shortcomings and recommends, in particular, improving the supervision of non-financial sectors (lawyers, real estate professionals, accountants, auditors, art and precious metals professionals).
To read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/1ol (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)