Keywords

• This paper presents an evaluation of the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (aml/cft) program. We find that some areas of the aml/cft framework are consistently weaker than others in the area of prevention measures. Specifically
• we have two findings: the first
• positive one
• points to a substantial adequacy of the repressive measures
• the second
• negative one
• points to a substantial failure of countries to adopt adequate preventive measures
• and calls for renewed efforts to improve implementation of preventive measures across the board
• with specific regard to the activity of financial sector regulatory and supervisory authorities. Also
• Eurozone countries outperform all other groups in the sample. Finally
• the limited availability of country information and the multiplicity of assessors and methodologies make it difficult to evaluate the performance of the program. Therefore
• we suggest greater transparency and availability of detailed countriesâ€
• ™
• information
• and follow up assessments of the weak areas of a countryâ€
• ™
• s aml/cft framework at higher frequency than the established 5 years