In a new report, the Council of Europe anti-money laundering body Moneyval calls on the Albanian authorities to step up their efforts in pursuing launderers and confiscating their assets connected to significant proceeds-generating offences, and in tackling terrorist financing related risks.
The report makes a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of Albania’s anti money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CFT) system and its level of compliance with the Financial Action Task Force recommendations.
While Moneyval acknowledges that the Albanian authorities have a reasonably good understanding of the country’s money laundering risks in the formal economy and have national coordination mechanisms for policy-making to address risks, these mechanisms have not proven to be fully effective and there are some areas that would benefit from a more detailed analysis of the threats posed.
Corruption poses major money laundering risks in Albania. Often linked to organised crime activities, it generates substantial amounts of criminal proceeds and seriously undermines the effective functioning of the criminal justice system. The authorities are aware of the risks from corruption but so far law enforcement has given limited attention to target corruption-related money laundering.
[…] its lax measures to combat money laundering stating that whilst it appears the government have a good understanding of what money laundering is and how to prevent it, for some reason they choose not to implement the […]