National Bank of Serbia cites Moneyval evaluation placing Serbia in regular monitoring with strong AML CFT ratings

The National Bank of Serbia highlighted the Council of Europe Moneyval mutual evaluation of Serbia, which assessed both technical compliance with Financial Action Task Force standards and the effectiveness of Serbia’s anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing and proliferation financing regime. Moneyval placed Serbia in the regular monitoring procedure, which the National Bank of Serbia described as the best available outcome from a mutual evaluation and noted is currently applied to six of Moneyval’s 33 states and jurisdictions. Moneyval assessed Serbia as having a substantial level of effectiveness in seven of 11 areas and a moderate level in four, with no areas rated as low effectiveness. On technical compliance, Serbia was assessed as fully compliant with 13 recommendations, largely compliant with 23 and partially compliant with four, with none rated non-compliant. For areas within the National Bank of Serbia’s remit, the report assessed supervision as substantially effective and found 12 of 15 recommendations relevant to the financial system fully compliant and three largely compliant, while also noting a strong framework for licensing and supervising financial institutions and digital asset-related service providers. The evaluation identified a key weakness in the non-financial sector, citing the lack of effective supervision of lawyers by the Bar Association of Serbia and recommending the establishment of effective two-level, risk-based oversight.