The road out of the FATF’s grey list: Malta aims for 18-month exit plan

Just one month after the news hit that Malta would be placed under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global organisation fighting money laundering and the financing of terrorism, a lead expert has shared that authorities are aiming for an 18-month exit strategy.

Alfred Camilleri, permanent secretary at the Finance Ministry, who spoke at FinanceMalta’s 14th annual conference, said the authorities are formulating a “very ambitious” plan that is almost in its final draft.

FinanceMalta is a public-private organisation tasked with promoting Malta as an international finance centre.

Mr Camilleri is well-placed to share such detail as the chairman of the National Coordination Committee on Combatting Money Laundering, responsible for getting Malta off the FATF’s greylist of countries deemed less trustworthy in terms of AML.

In June, when the greylisting news hit, Prime Minister Robert Abela had explained that as of October, Government will be allowed to request an FATF site visit for Malta, where technical experts evaluate the work undertaken to address shortcomings highlighted in the FATF’s action plan for Malta’s authorities.

After this, and should the site visit prove to be successful, the FATF will then revise the decision at a future plenary session.

Also speaking at the FinanceMalta conference, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit director and a senior member of Malta’s money-laundering committee, Kenneth Farrugia, remarked that other jurisdictions had been successful in exiting the FATF’s grey list within a period of 18 months, such as Iceland, which was greylisted in October 2019 and removed in October 2020.