FATF warns Nepal of blacklisting

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — a global anti-money laundering agency — has warned Nepal to implement its commitments in fighting against the flow of dirty money or will be black listed.
During a meeting of FATF/Asia-Pacific Regional Review group's face-to-face meeting last week, the global body has threatened Nepal to black list, after the country failed to fulfill its past promises on deadline.
Nepal had promised to update the Acts and laws against the flow of dirty money and ratify remaining two Bills under UN conventions — Mutual Legal Assistance Bill and Extradition Bill that are still in the parliament — by the end of 2011, but could not walk the talk forcing the regional meeting to propose some two dozen reforms."The meeting proposed some 22 reforms, but we agreed on three reforms — legal reform, strengthening of Financial Information Unit (FIU) under the central bank and strengthening of banking reports — for the time being as the country is passing through a transition phase," according a participants at the meeting that took place in Sydney, Australia.
Nepal — led by secretary at the Prime Minister's Office Trilochan Uprety — has presented its progress report in the meeting. Central bank deputy governor Maha Prasad Adhikari, secretary at the Ministry of Law Bhesraj Sharma, three joint secretaries of the Finance Ministry and FIU's deputy director Hari Prasad Nepal took part in the meeting.
Earlier, prescribed by the global anti-money laundering agency, the parliament has already ratified two UN Conventions — International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism-1999 and UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime — in June, 2011. But it needs to prepare Acts according to the Conventions.
Now, Nepal must meet its commitments by 2012 February 13, where the FATF is going to meet in Paris. The FATF Plenary and Working Group Meetings on October 24-28, 2011 in Paris, France had broadly discussed on July, 2011's 14th annual meeting of Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) report and forwarded the progress report to the FATF plenary for further discussions.Nepal is one of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) members in the FATF Plenary as it is not an independent member of FATF.
The Paris plenary had discussed on consideration of policy issues relating to the current review of the FATF standards; matters relevant to the fourth round of evaluations (commencing after 2012); and international cooperation issues with respect to a number of countries — including some APG members — and determining the way forward for jurisdictions that have strategic and other deficiencies in their domestic AML/CFT frameworks.
Of the total 40 plus nine compliance of Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Nepal has still to fulfill most of them.