Global Money Laundering risk index rises with Iran rated worst and Finland least risky
by Jack Large
The average risk of money laundering has risen in the past year, according to the Basel Institute on Governance have released its 2017 Anti Money Laundering Index which assesses 146 countries money laundering/terrorism financing risks*. (The Basel AML Index does not assess the amount of illicit financial money or transactions.)
Main results and findings in 2017 were:
- the average country risk level has been deteriorating over the last three years. (The global average risk scores were 5.82 in 2015 and 5.85 in 2016, the average risk score this year is equal to 6.15 (on a scale of 0=low risk to 10=high risk)
- The 10 countries with the highest AML risk are Iran, Afghanistan, Guinea-Bissau, Tajikistan, Laos, Mozambique, Mali, Uganda, Cambodia and Tanzania.
- The three lowest risk countries are the same as last year: Finland, followed by Lithuania and Estonia.
- The greatest improvements since 2016 have been made by Sudan, Taiwan (China), Israel and Bangladesh.
- The countries that deteriorated most severely in their scores in 2017 are Jamaica, Tunisia, Hungary, Uzbekistan and Peru.
2017 Basel AML Index scores and ranking**
Source & Copyright©2017 - The Basel Institute on Governance
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* - The Basel AML Index
The current Basel AML Index edition covers 146 countries and assigns each country a score on a scale from 0 (low risk) to 10 (high risk). High-risk scores in the Basel AML Index generally indicate weak AML/CTF standards, low institutional capacities and a lack of transparency in the financial and public sector. The Basel AML Index does not assess the amount of illicit financial money or transactions but is designed to assess the risk of money laundering, i.e. to indicate the vulnerability of a country to money laundering and terrorism financing based on publicly available indicators. The Basel AML Index is a composite index, meaning the overall score is a weighted average of 14 indicators from various publicly available sources such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Transparency International, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum
* * - Basel AML Index along with graphics and excel data available from index.baselgovernance.org
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