The Minister for Finance Prof. Edward Scicluna participated in the concluding session of a National Money Laundering / Risk Assessment Workshop on Thursday 10th July 2014. Also present for the session were the Attorney General Dr. Peter Grech, the Central Bank of Malta (CBM) Governor Prof Josef Bonnici, together with senior officials from the Malta Financial Services Authority and the Malta Police Force, and other authorities.
The Government of Malta is currently undertaking a National Risk Assessment (NRA) with the aim of identifying, assessing, and understanding the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing in Malta This exercise is being carried out by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) under the direction of Mr Manfred Galdes, Director of the FIAU. World Bank experts have been engaged to assist the Maltese authorities in carrying out this national risk assessment.
During the concluding session, Minister Scicluna was presented with an overview of the National Risk Assessment process, as well as the findings and the action-plan as resulting from the NRA, by the FIAU. Following the presentation of the findings and the action plan, the World Bank representatives also delivered their own views and feedback.
“In the field of anti-money laundering, Malta is leading by example by voluntarily submitting itself to a national risk assessment. This would trigger an action plan which would strength the co-ordination between existing agencies and authorities in Malta and abroad. I am very proud of this initiative,” Prof. Scicluna said.
The workshop was concluded by a roundtable discussion of the NRA’s findings, action-plan, and course of action which considered the best use of the findings, discussions on how to improve the quality of NRAs in future years, the policy on access to the NRA results, how the action-plan can synergise with current action plans, implementation issues and challenges of the action-plan, and identifying solutions.
The first of such workshops was conducted by the World Bank representatives in November 2013, where the process to carry out the NRA was initiated. The project now is at an advanced stage and the World Bank Experts were once again in Malta to co-ordinate a second and final workshop which took place between Tuesday 8th and Thursday 10th July 2014.
The third day of the workshop involved a roundtable meeting, during which the World Bank officials and the co-ordinators of this project will brief Government Ministers, policy makers, and the heads of supervisory authorities on the findings and conclusions of the risk assessment, with a view of the drawing up of an action plan outlining steps that need to be taken at a national level to address the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities identified.
In this high-level meeting, the country’s policy-makers and regulators had the opportunity to discuss the way forward following the conclusion of this exercise with the experts from the World Bank.
– Thursday, 10th July, 2014
