Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia Marouane Abassi announced that the final date of his country’s removal from the blacklist of non-cooperative countries in the global fight against money laundering and terrorism financing will be October.
During a press conference held at the Tunisian Central Bank, Abassi declared that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will visit Tunisia in mid-September to check the extent to which it has stuck to the action plan adopted in November 2017 against money laundering and terrorism financing.
Tunisia has taken 22 decisions to freeze the accounts of individuals and associations involved in suspicious financial transactions worth 350 million dinars ($119 million) in early 2019.
On Thursday evening, the FATF announced that Tunisia had completed the implementation of its plan and decided to schedule a field visit to verify its implementation. It confirmed that Tunisia has complied with 29 of the recommendations outlined by the FATF for the Middle East and North Africa.
Abassi explained that Tunisia’s removal from the FATF blacklist also means removal from the European Union (EU)’s blacklist, to which it was added in February 2018.
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