GFSC removes Iceland from 'equivalent' list

Chris Hamblin

16 December 2019

This action is a result of the Financial Action Task Force’s recent finding of strategic deficiencies in Iceland’s regime for tackling money laundering and terrorist finance. The commission says that it cannot consider Iceland to be an 'equivalent' jurisdiction with AML/CFT standards and supervision which meet the FATF's 40 Recommendations.

Iceland (along with Mongolia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe) is now on the FATF's so-called 'grey list' whose official name is "other monitored jurisdictions." The FATF blacklist, now called the "call for action," is an approximate reincarnation of the old, discredited, list of "non-co-operative countries and territories" which the FATF abandoned a decade ago because it was too obviously political.