The global financial crimes watchdog has said that Türkiye has "substantially completed" the necessary steps to be removed from its "gray list," as the country's finance minister said the process has reached its final stage.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) downgraded Türkiye to the "gray list" in 2021. In November last year, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said the country was fully compliant with all but one of the watchdog's 40 standards.
That included technical compliance related to cryptocurrency assets. This January, Türkiye announced it had reached the final phase in the technical studies of the legal regulations regarding crypto assets.
Şimşek on Friday said that the process to remove Türkiye from the FATF gray list has reached its final stage.
His remarks came after FATF said the country "has substantially completed" steps for its removal from the list, including countries that it suggests have taken insufficient action to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
A statement stressed that Türkiye made a high-level political commitment to work with the force in October 2021 to strengthen the effectiveness of its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Financing Terrorism (CFT) systems.
"At its February 2024 Plenary, the FATF made the initial determination that Türkiye has substantially completed its action plan and warrants an on-site assessment to verify the implementation of the AML/CFT reforms has begun and is being sustained, that the, and that the necessary political commitment remains in place to sustain implementation in the future," said the statement.
"Türkiye has made key reforms, including (1) enhancing its approach to risk-based AML/CFT supervision; (2) taking steps to ensure sanctions for AML/CFT breaches and beneficial ownership requirements are dissuasive; (3) enhancing resources for its FIU (financial intelligence unit) and the use of financial intelligence produced; (4) undertaking more complex ML (money laundering) investigations and prosecutions in line with risks; (5) improving its asset recovery system; (6) prioritizing TF investigations, prosecutions and confiscations related to U.N.-designated groups; (7) enhancing its implementation of targeted financial sanctions for terrorism financing; and (8) enhancing outreach to a broad range of NPOs (non-profit organization) and taking steps to ensure that supervision of NPOs is risk-based and does not disrupt or discourage legitimate NPO activity, such as fundraising," it added.
Şimşek stressed that the task force decided that Türkiye had completed all the items of an action plan meant to further strengthen AFL and CFT systems.
"In accordance with the procedure, the evaluation report to be prepared by the FATF team following the visit to Türkiye will be discussed at the general assembly meeting in June and the gray list decision for our country is expected to be removed at this meeting," he noted.
The point Türkiye has reached is the result of intensive work carried out by all relevant institutions and organizations, especially the ministries of Justice, Interior and Foreign Affairs, under the coordination of the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK), Şimşek said.
