On June 28, 2024, Jamaica and Türkiye have been removed from the FATF Grey List, also known as Jurisdiction under Increased Monitoring list, which includes countries that are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing.

At the Financial Action Task Force plenary meeting ending June 28, 2024, Jamaica and Türkiye were confirmed as having successfully completed their action plans to resolve the strategic deficiencies identified earlier during their mutual evaluations within the agreed timeframe and consequently removed from the FATF Grey List.

On 23rd February 2024, UAE was removed from the FATF Grey List, a list also known as jurisdiction under increased monitoring list, which includes countries that are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing.

At the FATF plenary meeting held from 21st to 23rd February 2024, UAE was confirmed to have successfully shown that it had met the action points and consequently been removed from the grey list. Similarly, Gibraltar, Barbados, and Uganda have also been removed from the Grey List.

Further, Kenya and Namibia are now added to the FATF grey list. 

The United Arab Emirates was added to the Grey List on 4th March 2022. The UAE was supposed to fully implement FATF recommendations set out in its action plan that was issued following the UAE’s 2020 Mutual Evaluation.

The FATF recognised the variety of reforms taken by the UAE since its inclusion in the grey list, including:
1. The establishment of an Executive Office to counter ML/TF
2. Establishment of a special court to combat financial crimes
3. Adoption of new AML/CFT guidelines for FIs and DNFBPs
4. Adoption of a new penal code strengthening UAE’s ML/TF, anti-bribery and corruption regulations

The EOCN (Executive Office for Control and Non-Proliferation) and its team worked tirelessly to ensure compliance with the FATF recommendations and to enforce the national AML/CFT action plan. It also developed an automated intelligence platform called FawriTick that integrates details of financial crimes.  Further, a reporting platform was specifically developed to address the AML/CFT compliance needs. 

Fines worth more than AED 115 million were issued for money laundering, and more than 8000 inspections were carried out. The authorities seized AED 925 million in breaches of AML practices and procedures. 

The United Arab Emirates signed various preliminary agreements for anti-financial crime and ratified extradition treaties with South Africa and Denmark. 

The authorities are now working on the UAE’s National Risk Assessment plan which should be ready by the end of 2024.

All of the above reforms and strong enforcement helped take UAE out of Grey List.