While Ghana is being ejected from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list, 4 new countries are joining. These are: Haiti, Malta, the Philippines and South Sudan.

The Gafi announced on Friday that it had placed Haiti, Malta, the Philippines and South Sudan on the “gray” list of countries subject to increased surveillance, at the end of its plenary assembly. The FATF has also removed Ghana from this “grey” list of countries that do not do enough against money laundering, terrorist financing or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The FATF praised Ghana, which “was put on the grey list in 2018 and made a lot of efforts to improve its controls”, according to Marcus Pleyer. According to a statement by this intergovernmental body, which brings together 37 states, the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council, when a jurisdiction is placed under increased surveillance, this means that the country is committed to rapidly resolving identified strategic shortcomings within a specified time frame and may be subject to additional controls

In addition, the FATF considered that Mauritius and Botswana had both “largely completed their action plans at the technical level” and should soon receive FATF teams who will check the progress made “as soon as possible” on the ground. A total of 22 countries are now subject to increased surveillance, compared to 19 when the list was last updated in February.