Mauritius largely compliant to recommendations

The Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance, Mr. Mahen Kumar Seeruttun, made this statement, yesterday, during a press conference held at Ebene, to discuss FATF‘s recent assessment of Mauritius. 

The Minister underscored the arduous work of the technical team of Mauritius to scale up efforts to improve Mauritius’ position in accordance to the requirements of FATF. Indeed, there is an undeniable progress since the 2018 assessment where Mauritius was found to be adhering to only 14 recommendations.  

According to the Minister, satisfying the 35 recommendations in such a short span of time is a laudable task and indicates the unflinching commitment of the Ministry to work on shortcomings for an improved performance of the country. The necessary bold actions including the implementation of laws and regulations have since followed, including amending the legal framework to require legal persons and legal arrangements to disclose of beneficial ownership information and improving the processes of identifying and confiscating proceeds of crimes, he added.

Mr. Seeruttun pointed out that among the five recommendations that Mauritius has been found to not currently satisfy, includes the Global Business. Mauritius will work to implement its action plan, by: (1) demonstrating that the supervisors of its global business sector and Designated Non-Financial Businesss and Professions implement risk-based supervision; (2) ensuring the access to accurate basic and beneficial ownership information by competent authorities in a timely manner; (3) demonstrating that Law Enforcement Agencies have capacity to conduct money laundering investigations, including parallel financial investigations and complex cases; (4) implementing a risk based approach for supervision of its Nonprofit Organisation sector to prevent abuse for Terrorist financing purposes, and demonstrating the adequate implementation of targeted financial sanctions through outreach and supervision.

Minister Seeruttun also indicated that Government was already undertaking the necessary measures in regards to attaining these, and reiterated its determination to the President of the FATF to further accelerate efforts and complete the agreed action plans expeditiously and to resolve swiftly the identified strategic deficiencies by September 2021.

Also, he pointed out that the FATF Methodology to assess the effectiveness of the implementations of its recommendations is considered to be subjective and is in the process of being redefined.