Malta will have implemented all Moneyval recommendations by deadline, Muscat says

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that since data for the report was collected last year, Malta had already addressed a majority of the points raised.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that Malta will have implemented all of Moneyval's recommendations by the set deadline
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that Malta will have implemented all of Moneyval's recommendations by the set deadline

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this morning that he is confident that recommendations to Malta by Moneyval – the Council of Europe’s money laundering monitoring body – will have been implemented by the set deadline.

Last week it was reported that Malta’s anti-money laundering regime had failed a Moneyval review which took place last year, though the final report has not yet been made public.

Asked what the government would be doing on the report’s findings, Muscat insisted that rather than consider what the government would be doing, a more pertinent question was to ask what it had already done.

“Whoever is reading these reports, even if they are leaked reports at this stage, should read them properly because the report has a cut-off date, which was last November, and since then many of the recommendations put forward in that report have been implemented,” Muscat told journalists.

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“I am convinced that, without commenting on the contents of the report, that we wil have implemented all the recommendations by the set deadline.”:  

For countries to pass the evaluation, they must have the necessary legislation in place to combat money laundering and to also adequately enforce those laws.

Malta’s rating was described as poor overall, with sources who spoke to the Times of Malta confirming that the country had not secured an acceptable grade in enough sections of the assessment to pass the overall test.

Malta now has a year to address the shortcomings mentioned in the report at which point it will be assessed once again.

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