APA’s Europe bureau reports that the report contains a large evaluation analysis on money laundering and financing of terrorism in Europe. The organization noted the achievement of the recent considerable progresses in the member states, highly assessed the adoption of new draft laws and implementation of legal reforms towards anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. The reports stressed that technical compliance of the member states was improved and adjusted to international norms. MONEYVAL also notes its main recommendations in the report.
The organization calls on judicial, police and security service systems to combat effectively, increase punitive measures such as the confiscation of property against money laundering and create deterrent effect against these activities. According to the report, money laundering by one third of organized criminal networks is not solved and the committers remain unpunished.
The report also covers the situation in Azerbaijan. The organization has carried out assessment on Azerbaijan, including six countries in the end of the third stage. According to this assessment, there are some deficiencies in the six countries - Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine.
The President of the organization called on the delegations of the abovementioned countries to eliminate these gaps. The identified deficiencies related to a lack of criminal liability for legal persons and failure to extend the confiscation regime to all designated categories of predicate offence. Both deficiencies have been largely addressed by the introduction of amendments to the Criminal Code. Minor issues of both deficiencies which have not been tackled by the amendments will be addressed during the on-site visit to Azerbaijan taking place in 2014.
Addressing the presentation of the annual report, Executive Secretary to MONEYVAL John Ringguth stated that they cooperated with Azerbaijan for several years: “Azerbaijan has achieved considerable progress. We will discuss the problems regarding Azerbaijan during our visit to the country next year. Moreover, we will make another evaluation report on Azerbaijan next year.”
Follow us on Telegram
t.me/apanewsaz
Follow us on Instagram
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
