Financial Action Task Force blacklist

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The Financial Action Task Force blacklist (often abbreviated to FATF blacklist, and officially known as the "Call for action"),^[1] is a blacklist maintained by the Financial Action Task Force.^[2][3]

The blacklist has been issued by the FATF since 2000, and lists countries which FATF judges to be non-cooperative in the global fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, calling them "Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories" (NCCTs).^[4]

Although non-appearance on the blacklist was perceived to be a mark of approbation for offshore financial centres (or "tax havens") that are sufficiently well regulated to meet all of the FATF's criteria, in practice, the list included countries that did not operate as offshore financial centres. The FATF updates the blacklist regularly, adding or deleting entries.^[4]

The FATF describes "High-risk jurisdictions subject to a Call for Action" as having "significant strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and financing of proliferation. For all countries identified as high-risk, the FATF calls on all members and urges all jurisdictions to apply enhanced due diligence. In the most serious cases, countries are called upon to apply counter-measures to protect the international financial system from the ongoing money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing risks emanating from the country".^[5] As of November 2022, only three countries were on the FATF blacklist: North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar.^[6]

The FATF has been characterized as effective in shifting laws and regulations to combat illicit financial flows. FATF incentivizes stricter regulations through its public noncomplier list, which leads financial institutions to shift resources and services away from the countries on the blacklist. This in turn motivates domestic economic and political actors in the listed countries to pressure their governments to introduce regulations that are compliant with the FATF.^[7]