EU adds saudi arabia and panama to dirty money blacklist

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sry for copy paste

EU adds Saudi Arabia to dirty-money blacklist, upsets UK, U.S. | Reuters

The European Commission added Saudi Arabia, Panama and four U.S. territories to a blacklist of nations it considers a threat because of lax controls on terrorism financing and money laundering, the EU executive said on Wednesday.

The list now includes 23 jurisdictions, up from 16. The commission said it added jurisdictions with “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes”.

Other newcomers to the list are Libya, Botswana, Ghana, Samoa, the Bahamas and the four United States territories of American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam.


The U.S. Treasury said the listing process was “flawed” and rejected the inclusion of the four U.S. territories on the list.

The other listed states are Afghanistan, North Korea, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and Yemen.

Bosnia, Guyana, Laos, Uganda and Vanuatu were removed.

 

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The U.S. Treasury said the listing process was “flawed” and rejected the inclusion of the four U.S. territories on the list.

The listing process is flawed because it is politics, in part.

Hypotethically, even if a country like Serbia had lax AML controls, the EU would not blacklist them, because they are in the pipeline of becoming an EU member (Year 2025 has been quoted). On the other hand, EU member states Latvia and Estonia have laundered tens of billions of dirty Russian money. They are expected to clean their act, but no blacklisting is forthcoming. Similarly, HSBC in the U.S. was given only a light penalty for laundering billons for the ultra violent Mexican drug cartels.

Money laundering as a concept and AML legislation is a bad joke, except it is not funny for the little people who get crushed with the said legislation.