Norway has been hard at work since 2014 to ensure it has a robust system in place to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing occurring under its watch.
And according to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), it shows.
The FATF last reviewed how effective Norway’s measures to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing five years ago.
Its follow-up showed that the Scandinavian country had improved across three different areas.
As a result, the FATF re-rated Norway from moderate to substantial in all those three areas.
Firstly, the FATF noted that the nation has reached a substantial level of effectiveness in understanding the money laundering and terrorist financing risks it faces.
The FATF praised Norway for being able to co-ordinate actions domestically to combat these crimes.
The FATF stated that a combination of robust risk assessments and agencies’ threat assessments has helped Norway better understand its money laundering and terrorist financing risk context.
Secondly, the FATF stated that competent authorities in Norway have reached a substantial level of effectiveness in appropriately using financial intelligence and other relevant information for money laundering and terrorist financing investigations.
This was evident in Norway being able to demonstrate an improved use of financial intelligence by nearly tripling the number of financial intelligence reports used by Norwegian law enforcement agencies in 2018 compared to 2015.
During that time, it increased from 50 to 134.
Thirdly, the FATF noted that Norway has now achieved a substantial level of effectiveness in preventing persons and entities involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction from raising, moving and using funds, consistent with the relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions.
Moreover, the FATF was also positive to see Norway having removed delays in transposition of designations for proliferation financing sanctions into Norwegian law. The country has established a mechanism to communicate and coordinate on proliferation financing issues, and to establish risk-based targeted supervision.
That being said, FATF urged Norway to focus on ensuring more appropriate supervision, monitoring and regulation of financial institutions and lawyers, real estate agents and other non-financial entities and to ensure that the proceeds of crime are confiscated.
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