Ecuador has not shown sufficient progress in the fight against money laundering. This is considered today the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which included the country on the blacklist of states with deficiencies in its anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism.

Along with Ecuador were included in this listing Vietnam and Yemen. The decision was made public after the meeting of the working groups and the third plenary meeting of FATF under the chairmanship of Italian Giancarlo del Buffalo, in Paris, between 18 and 22 this month.

The Attorney General, through a statement, expressed his opposition to the inclusion of Ecuador on that list. “Ecuador has demonstrated, beyond any doubt, the implementation of significant progress in its fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, which have been recognized by the Review Group itself of the Americas in his report to the FATF plenary in Rome, so that not only strongly reject this decision puts us in a list of countries with high financial risk and not cooperating, but we do not share the criteria that led to the resolution of the FATF, which is not duly appreciated the progress of our country, favoring technicalities of procedure and regulations of the FATF, which do not reflect the real situation of Ecuador and its progress in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, “said Attorney Diego Garcia, said in a statement the state institution.

According to the resolution of the FATF, “despite the high level political commitment made by the Ecuador to work with the FATF and Gafisud, focusing specifically on the strategic weaknesses of AML / CFT (Prevention of Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism , for its acronym in English), Ecuador has not shown sufficient progress in implementing its action plan within the time allowed, and still maintain certain strategic deficiencies. ” The resolution of this day of the FATF, the red list remained unchanged, with Iran and North Korea. They threatened to move from the blacklist Red List three countries: Kenya, Myanmar and Turkey. A blacklist entered three countries: Ecuador, Vietnam and Yemen.

On February 18, 2010, Ecuador has already been included in the call FATF blacklist. So, was considered one of the countries that pose a risk to the international financial system, along with Iran, Angola, North Korea and Ethiopia. At that time, the list responded to the request of member countries of the Group of 20 (G20) to identify “non-cooperative jurisdictions” in the fight against money laundering. Angola, North Korea, Ecuador and Ethiopia were mentioned in early 2010 as jurisdictions that have not been committed to the FATF action plan, in addition to not complying with international standards against terrorist financing to counter laundering.

In June 2010, Ecuador became the black list to the gray list of the FATF, after, among other control measures, the Attorney General’s Office sent to the Assembly the draft law amending the Law to Suppress Laundering Assets, which was finally approved in the Legislature. But today, the international body found that Ecuador’s actions are not enough in the fight against money laundering. During 2010, the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) reports met by USD 2 028 million, which circulated in Ecuador in unusual operations and unjustified. This data was included in the mutual evaluation report on the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing in Ecuador, prepared by the Financial Action Task Force of South America (Gafisud) and released on December 15 last. In that report, and gave the regional body alerts insufficient control of washing in several sectors: real estate, notary, marketing of metals and precious stones, service and trust fund management, etc..

Source: Human Rights Ecuador