Barbados’ progress in strengthening measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, February 10, 2021– As a result of Barbados’ progress in strengthening its framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since their 2018 mutual evaluation, the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) has re-rated the country on 13 of the 40 Recommendations.

Barbados has been in an enhanced follow-up process, following the adoption of their CFATF mutual evaluation report, which assessed the effectiveness of Barbados’ anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) measures and the country’s compliance with the FATF Recommendations. In line with the CFATF Procedures for mutual evaluations, Barbados has reported back to the CFATF on the progress it has made to strengthen its AML/CFT framework.

This report analyses Barbados’ progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in the Mutual Evaluation Report.   

To reflect this progress, the CFATF has re-rated Barbados on the following Recommendations:

1 - Assessing risks and applying a risk-based approach from partially compliant to largely compliant

4 - Confiscation and provisional measures from partially compliant to compliant

7 - Targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation from non-compliant to largely compliant

8 - Non-profit organisations from non-compliant to partially compliant

19 - Higher-risk countries from partially compliant to largely compliant

20 - Reporting of suspicious transactions from partially complaint to compliant

29 - Financial intelligence units from partially compliant to largely compliant

32 - Cash couriers from partially compliant to largely compliant

33 - Statistics from partially compliant to largely compliant

34 - Guidance and feedback from partially compliant to largely compliant

38 - Mutual legal assistance: Freezing and confiscation from partially compliant to largely compliant

The CFATF agreed to maintain the rating of largely compliant for Recommendations 2, 5 and 18 and the partially compliant rating for Recommendations 23 and 24. The rating for Recommendation 15 was downgraded from compliant to partially compliant and Recommendation 21 was downgraded from largely compliant to partially compliant.

The report also looks at whether Barbados’ measures meet the requirements of FATF Recommendations that have changed since their 2018 mutual evaluation, taking into account any new measures since the mutual evaluation.

   Click here to access the FUR