Ukrainian financial intelligence highly assessed by MONEYVAL

The Council of Europe's Committee of experts on the evaluation of anti-money laundering measures and the financing of terrorism (MONEYVAL) is satisfied with the efforts made by the Ukrainian authorities to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the press service of Ukraine's State Financial Monitoring Committee (SFMC) reported on Tuesday.

As SFMC Chief Ihor Cherkassky said, the assessment of Ukraine's achievements by the CE Committee has confirmed the considerable progress made by the Ukrainian state in that field.

"Ukraine has managed to create a really effective and modern system, which has become a reliable tool in fight against economic crimes," he said.

The report on Ukraine's anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism covered the end of 2008. It was adopted by MONEYVAL at its 29th plenary meeting in Strasbourg on March 16-20, 2009.

The report sets out Ukraine's levels of compliance with the FATF [Financial Action Task Force] 40 plus 9 Recommendations. The evaluation also includes Ukraine's compliance with Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 26, 2005, on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing and the Commission Directive 2006/70/EC of August 1, 2006 laying down implementing measures for Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the definition of 'politically exposed person' and the technical criteria for simplified customer due diligence procedures and for exemption on grounds of a financial activity conducted on an occasional or very limited basis.

The experts highly estimated the performance of the appropriate structure of the Ukrainian financial intelligence, its high professional standards, which is the result of the financial intelligence departments' membership of international organizations. Currently, the SFMC is the full-fledged national center for collecting and analyzing information about suspicious financial operations.

Source: KyivPost