Ghana officially removed from EU money laundering list

Ghana placed on EU money laundering list in 2020

Ghana recorded lapses in financial system, European Commission

Rigorous reforms contributed to Ghana's removal from list, Akufo-Addo

The European Commission on January 7, 2022, officially removed Ghana from its list of Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) countries.

This comes after the Council of the European Union notified

Read full articleGhana of its decision after a successful evaluation of the country’s anti-money laundering and terrorism financing regime by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

"The FATF welcomed significant progress made by Botswana, Ghana and Mauritius in improving its AML/CFT regime and noted that Botswana, Ghana and Mauritius have established the legal and regulatory framework to meet the commitments in their action plans regarding the strategic deficiencies that the FATF had identified,” the Council of the European Union said in a notice.

It continued, “The Commission's analysis concludes that The Bahamas, Botswana, Ghana, Iraq and Mauritius no longer have strategic deficiencies in their AML/CFT regime considering the available information.

“The Bahamas, Botswana, Ghana, Iraq and Mauritius have strengthened the effectiveness of their AML/CFT regime. These measures are sufficiently comprehensive and meet the necessary requirements to consider that strategic deficiencies identified under article 9 of the Directive (EU) 2015/849 have been removed,” portions of the notice read.

President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo reacting to the development on Thursday, January 13, 2022, during a joint press conference with President of Hungary, János Áder said the country was delighted to be taken off the list following rigorous reforms.

“We are delighted that, on 7th January 2022, we received a notification from the European Commission, through the intermediary of the Commissioner for Financial Services, Financial Stability and Capital Markets Union, Mairead McGuinness, that Ghana, after the pursuit of some rigorous reforms, has now, formally, been removed from the Grey List of high-risk third countries in money laundering activities,” President Akufo-Addo said.

In May 2020, Ghana including 11 other countries were placed under the Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorist Financing list by the European Commission.

The reasons behind the move meant that financial transactions from Ghana into the EU and vice versa, posed significant threats to the European Union’s financial system.

The Commission earlier said it identified that Ghana’s financial system recorded some lapse with regards to money launderers and terrorist financiers.