On 15 February 2017, Transparency International (TI) published a report, Top Secret: Countries keep financial crime fighting data to themselves, which recommends improvements to the public disclosure of anti-money laundering (AML) statistics by national authorities.
The report follows analysis conducted by TI of the public availability of AML data by 12 countries (including the UK, the US, France, Germany and Italy) relating to five areas: international co-operation, AML supervision, legal persons and arrangements, a financial intelligence and AML legal system and operations. TI found that data about national authorities’ AML work was only partially available in the countries assessed and that where data is public, it was often provided by international AML bodies, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), rather than by national authorities.
TI recommends that:
- Financial supervisors should collect and publish AML enforcement statistics on a yearly basis, following the list of indicators recommended by the FATF.
- The requirement to publish yearly AML enforcement statistics should become a standard recommendation of international bodies including the FATF and the G20.
- TI notes that the Fourth Money Laundering Directive ((EU) 2015/849) (MLD4) already includes a requirement for EU member states to publish AML statistics.
- TI also recommends that the FATF should take the lead in promoting standardised AML data reporting.
- Financial intelligence units (FIU) should publish comprehensive AML statistics to provide a good basis for public monitoring of a country’s AML effort.
For information on the FATF and its AML and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) standards: see Practice note, FATF international AML and CTF standards
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