NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Attorney General Ryan Pinder says that the Government is “cautiously optimistic” that The Bahamas has addressed the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) remaining concerns as the Davis administration seeks to bring the nation in line with anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing recommendations this November.
Pinder told Eyewitness News in an interview: “FATF has 40 recommendations on anti-money laundering that jurisdictions have to abide by. We are compliant or largely compliant in 38 of the 40 recommendations. We are partially complaint on how we treat non-profits and how we treat virtual asset service providers.
“We submitted our re-rating application to the FATF in May. The plenary is in November during which time the determination will be made as to whether we will get an upgrade to ‘compliant; or ‘largely compliant’ in both of those.”
Pinder added that he is looking forward to The Bahamas being re-rated on the recommendations in question.
“We are also keeping pace of recommendation 16 which deals with wire transfers, understanding KYC, and doing due diligence on who is sending money and receiving money,” he said.
“In the context of digital assets, that’s a whole new regime. We are modifying our wire transfer rules to address anomalies in the digital assets space so that we can maintain our complaint rating on 16.”
