The government has triggered an action plan to ensure that the country is delisted from the European Union’s (EU’s) grey list of countries with anti-money laundering deficiencies by the first quarter of 2021, a Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr Kwaku Kwarteng, has said.
He said the execution of the action plan — working with the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — was currently progressing steadily and expressed the confidence that Ghana would meet all the milestones by the end of the year to pave the way for its delisting from the grey list early next year.
“We have a joint action plan that we must follow and get off the list. The plan has been in operation for almost two years now and we have met all the milestones. We are confident that we will exit the list on schedule,” he said.
Leadership Conversation
Mr Kwarteng said this at the CAL Bank Leadership Conversation, a thought leadership programme, which was held on the theme: “Greylisting of Ghana by the EU and anti-money laundering deficiencies: Implications and lessons for the financial services sector and the way forward”.
He said Ghana got onto the EU’s list because it was first listed by the FATF, saying that once “we are off the list of the FATF, we will get off the EU’s list automatically”.
He said in the recent engagement with one of the committees of the FATF, it issued a report which was favourable to Ghana, noting that by the close of the year, the country would complete all the action points of the plan, after which the FATF would come and do another review.
Although the deputy minister did not disclose what the action plan entailed, the Daily Graphic gathered that there are 13 actions points, out of which Ghana has so far met 11.
Key among the actions yet to complete is the compilation of the Beneficial Ownership Register, which the Registrar General is currently putting together.
Besides meeting the EU’s requirement, the register is in tandem with the country’s revised companies code, the Companies Act, 2019 (Act 992).
How Ghana got on the list Explaining how Ghana got grey listed by the EU, Mr Kwarteng said the FATF, working through its regional bodies, undertook a peer review of the country recently and found strategic deficiencies in its anti-money laundering regime.“They found gaps that must be addressed in […]
