The Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) is an international organization that identifies countries with insufficient measures of combatting money laundering and terrorist financing (AML / CFT). Following the FATF Plenary in February 2016, Vanuatu was classified as a Grey List country.

Just recently, there was a significant change of the situation when, during the annual FATF Plenary held on 29th June 2018, all members of the organization unanimously agreed to delist Vanuatu from FATF Grey List.

FATF on-site review team visited Port Vila, where they reviewed Vanuatu’s implementation efforts and implementation strategic action plan. After this visit, the review team suggested that there was enough progress made to change Vanuatu’s situation and all necessary steps were taken in order to ensure that its anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing framework is strong enough and relevant to current AML/CFT requirements.

In relation to these developments, Vanuatu was mentioned in a public statement, published on FATF official website under the title “Jurisdictions no longer subject to monitoring”. The above-mentioned statement can be found by following the link.

The FATF congratulated Iraq and Vanuatu for the significant progress made in addressing the strategic AML/CFT deficiencies identified earlier by the FATF and included in their respective action plans.

Both countries will no longer be subject to the FATF’s monitoring under its on-going global AML/CFT compliance process and will work with their FATF-Style Regional Bodies MENAFATF (Iraq) and APG (Vanuatu) as they continue to further strengthen their AML/CFT regime.

FATF has taken off Vanuatu from its Grey List, nevertheless, Vanuatu remains under requirement to maintain its implementation efforts and comply with FATF standards. It is necessary for Vanuatu to obey FATF rules and any adverse changes to governmental AML&CTF policy would likely result in its returning to the FATF Grey List.