The Caribbean Financial Action Task Force has adopted and published its fourth-round mutual evaluation report on Montserrat, assessing the territory's anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and counter-proliferation financing framework against the Financial Action Task Force 40 Recommendations and the effectiveness of its system. The report finds that Montserrat has strengthened its legal and regulatory framework since its last evaluation and has a good understanding of its money laundering and terrorist financing risks, supported by a 2023 national risk assessment, a national strategy and coordination among competent authorities. At the same time, it concludes that implementation remains uneven across key areas, particularly supervision, preventive controls and beneficial ownership transparency. Operationally, the report says authorities can investigate and prosecute money laundering cases and have obtained convictions, but activity has been largely reactive and driven by parallel investigations. Financial intelligence has been useful, though outputs were constrained by low suspicious transaction reporting and the absence of suspicious reports from Customs, while the transition from the Financial Crimes and Analysis Unit to the Financial Intelligence Unit left the new FIU without formal staff appointments. Terrorist financing investigations and prosecutions were absent, which the report says is consistent with Montserrat's low terrorist financing risk. Financial institutions showed a more developed understanding of risks and obligations than designated non-financial businesses and professions, with customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence, transaction monitoring and sanctions screening applied inconsistently. Supervision was also limited during the review period, with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank taking over oversight of the domestic bank and the Financial Services Commission still at an early stage of risk-based AML/CFT supervision. On legal persons, basic company information was publicly available, but beneficial ownership information was not required during the review period and only began to be collected after the new Companies Act was proclaimed in April 2024.
Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF)2025-01-24
Caribbean Financial Action Task Force adopts Montserrat mutual evaluation report, finds stronger AML framework but uneven implementation
The Caribbean Financial Action Task Force has published its mutual evaluation report on Montserrat, finding that the territory has strengthened its AML/CFT framework and improved its technical compliance since the last review. It says Montserrat understands its risks and can investigate money laundering, but supervision, preventive controls and beneficial ownership transparency remain underdeveloped. The report also notes that recent legal reforms are too new for their effectiveness to be fully assessed.