“Georgia has taken steps to enhance its anti-money laundering and terrorist financing measures, but still needs to tackle certain shortcomings,” concluded the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) in a follow-up report released today.

In a press release, the Council of Europe said that Georgia has made “limited progress.”

“MONEYVAL finds that Georgia has made limited progress in addressing some of the technical compliance deficiencies impacting the application of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards on targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism and terrorist financing, and targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation financing. The progress made by Georgia was not sufficient to grant an upgrade on those two recommendations, and Georgia remains rated “partially compliant” on them,” the press release reads.

According to the Council of Europe, overall, out of the 40 recommendations, Georgia is currently rated as:
• Compliant with seven recommendations;
• Largely compliant with 24 recommendations;
• Partially compliant on eight recommendations, and
• Non-compliant on one recommendation, which related to non-profit organisations.

The Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) is a Council of Europe monitoring body and a Financial Action Task Force-Style Regional Body which assesses compliance with the main international standards to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the effectiveness of their implementation.