Following the publication of the list of high-risk jurisdictions by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Commission, Mauritius has, in turn, come with a more or less similar list and it was made possible in accordance with Section 17H(1) of the Financial Intelligence and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2002 (FIAMLA).
The Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance (Minister) has, on the recommendation of the National Committee for AML/CFT (Committee), published in the Government Gazette (General Notice 587) on 14th May 2020 the first-ever list of jurisdictions (List) which have been identified by the FATF as having deficiencies in their Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime.
However, the said List was neither communicated ‘immediately’ by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) as mandated and prescribed under Section 17H(5) of the FIAMLA, nor by the members of the Committee which includes the Financial Services Commission (FSC), amongst others. Only the Bank of Mauritius (BoM) has published the information in the subsection AML/CFT on its website.