FATF Lauds Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Regime

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

02 November 2009

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has ended its international monitoring with regard to Switzerland under the third round of evaluations.

According to the FATF, Switzerland has made significant progress in strengthening the systems that it has in place to combat money laundering.

Recently, Switzerland submitted a report to the FATF outlining the measures introduced since the last FATF evaluation, conducted in 2005. These measures include the revision of its Anti-Money Laundering Act and the strengthening of preventive measures and its structure of financial market supervision. As a result, on October 14, 2009, the FATF decided to end the international monitoring of Switzerland.

In future, Switzerland will only be subject to a simplified biennial process. This process requires Switzerland to submit regular reports on developments in its system of combating money laundering and terrorist financing with effect from October 2011. As such Switzerland will be among the first countries to be evaluated under this simplified process, alongside Italy, Norway and the UK.

The FATF nevertheless observed that shortcomings remain, particularly regarding the effectiveness of the system for reporting suspicious transactions, and transparency relating to bearer shares, as well as in terms of the measures in place to implement international standards on freezing terrorist assets.

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