{"id":8389,"date":"2023-10-31T09:53:25","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T14:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/?p=8389"},"modified":"2023-10-31T10:47:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T15:47:04","slug":"cayman-islands-removed-from-fatf-grey-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/client-advisory\/cayman-islands-removed-from-fatf-grey-list-8389\/","title":{"rendered":"Cayman Islands removed from FATF \u201cgrey list\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 27 October 2023, the Financial Action Task Force (\u201c<strong>FATF<\/strong>\u201d) announced at its plenary in Paris that the Cayman Islands would be removed from its anti-money laundering \u201cgrey list\u201d as the FATF has determined that the Cayman Islands AML regime now meets the international standard.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Background \/ Timeline <\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In March 2019, following an assessment of the jurisdiction by the Caribbean FATF (\u201c<strong>CFATF<\/strong>\u201d), the CFATF published a Mutual Evaluation Report (the \u201c<strong>Report<\/strong>\u201d) which assessed the effectiveness of the Cayman Island\u2019s anti-money laundering, countering terrorist and proliferation financing measures and compliance with the FATF\u2019s \u201940 Recommendations\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In February 2021, a follow up report published by the FATF rated the Cayman Islands as compliant or largely compliant with 39 of the FATF\u2019s 40 recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>Notwithstanding the above, at a FATF plenary that took place in February 2021, whilst the FATF recognized that the Cayman Islands had satisfied 60 of 63 actions to strengthen its anti-money laundering, countering terrorist and proliferation financing measures that were set out in the Report, the Cayman Islands was placed on the list maintained by the FATF of jurisdictions under increased monitoring (the \u201c<strong>grey list<\/strong>\u201d) pending its completion of the three final action points.<\/p>\n<p>The rationale for the Cayman Islands inclusion on the grey list arose from it being a major financial centre and, as such, is considered to be confronted with inherent AML\/CFT risks.\u00a0 The FATF expects countries presented with higher risks to have measures in place commensurate with that risk.<\/p>\n<p>The Cayman Islands was given an action plan which included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>applying sanctions that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive, and taking administrative penalties and enforcement actions against obliged entities to ensure that breaches are remediated effectively and in a timely manner;<\/li>\n<li>imposing adequate and effective sanctions in cases where relevant parties (including legal persons) do not file accurate, adequate and up to date beneficial ownership information; and<\/li>\n<li>demonstrating that they are prosecuting all types of money laundering in line with the jurisdiction\u2019s risk profile and that such prosecutions are resulting in the application of dissuasive, effective, and proportionate sanctions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As of June 2023, it was announced that the Cayman Islands fully satisfied the recommended actions laid out by the FATF.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What the FATF Decision means<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The FATF\u2019s recent decision is very welcome news and confirms the Cayman Islands\u2019 reputation as a well-regulated jurisdiction in all AML matters.<\/p>\n<p>From an EU perspective, the EU Commission maintains a list of \u201chigh risk third countries\u201d made up of jurisdictions which are deemed to have strategic decencies in their AML\/CFT regimes and which includes those jurisdictions listed on the FATF grey list.\u00a0 As a result of the Cayman Islands FATF grey listing, the Cayman Islands was added to this list in March 2022.\u00a0 \u00a0There is now an expectation\u00a0that the removal from the FATF\u2019s grey list will soon lead to the Cayman Islands\u2019 delisting from the EU\u2019s AML \/ CFT List.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Looking ahead<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The FATF\u2019s decision to delist the Cayman Islands completes the Cayman Island\u2019s participation in the FATF\u2019s 4th-round mutual evaluation process. The FATF will commence its 5<sup>th<\/sup> round process in 2025, with the Cayman Islands evaluation expected to begin in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>For further information on the matters referred to in this advisory, please contact one of the below contacts, your usual Campbells contact or visit our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/people\/\">website<\/a> for contact information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 27 October 2023, the Financial Action Task Force announced at its plenary in Paris that the Cayman Islands would be removed from its anti-money laundering \u201cgrey list\u201d as the FATF has determined that the Cayman Islands AML regime now meets the international standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[1773,21,15,18,2831],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8389"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8397,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8389\/revisions\/8397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8389"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campbellslegal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}