UAE set to come off financial crime watchdog’s grey list

• Financial Action Task Force team to visit Emirates
• Watchdog put UAE on enhanced monitoring in 2022

The UAE is poised to come off the so-called grey list, a category that means financial institutions must conduct more research on individuals and companies based in the country to combat money laundering. 

The Financial Action Task Force, an international watchdog that monitors compliance with rules on anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT), said on Friday that it would be sending a team to visit the UAE before February next year. 

Such visits are usually a precursor to removal from the enhanced monitoring regime. 

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The Paris-based watchdog put the UAE on the grey list in March last year, citing “strategic deficiencies” in its AML practices. 

However in June, the Financial Action Task Force said the UAE was “compliant” with 15 of 40 of its recommendations, “largely compliant” with 24 and “partially compliant” with the final one. The country had no “non-compliant” ratings, it said. 

“The UAE looks forward to welcoming the FATF assessment team to the UAE and further demonstrating the enhanced and sustained effectiveness of our AML/CFT framework,” Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh, UAE minister of state, said in a statement.