Morocco’s Interior Minister Warns Against Ranking Morocco in Money Laundering Black List
By Mohamed Hikal
Moroco News Tribune
Taroudant, Morocco| During a legislation committee meeting held Tuesday, which was devoted to the introduction, discussion and amendment of a bill concerning money laundry, M’hand Elaansser, Interior minister warned against the act of ranking the Moroccan international financial framework within the money laundry crimes black list.
This ranking could be inevitable in case there was no agreement upon the content of the bill and get it published on the official bulletin.
The final decision was due June 2013, said a source from the Moroccan Alakhbar.
M’hand Elaansser said before the committee last February the 18th during his introduction of the bill in Paris that Morocco was ranked within “the dark grey list”
Only international recommendations could keep Morocco out of such negative ranking. These recommendations are based on the extent to which Morocco incriminates terrorist financing.
The main aim of this bill is avoiding all possible negative consequences in case the bill is not amended toward incriminating terrorism funding.
Besides, this would imply that the Moroccan laws are inadequate and don’t conform to international norms.
On the other hand, the Financial Action Task Force (on Money Laundering) (FATF), which is in charge of developing policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, said in a statement last week that “despite Morocco’s high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and MENAFATF to address its strategic AML/CFT deficiencies, the FATF is not yet satisfied that Morocco has made sufficient progress in addressing its remaining key deficiency of criminalizing terrorist financing,”
“While Morocco has completed the other elements of its action plan, Morocco should work with the FATF and MENAFATF on addressing this remaining deficiency by enacting the necessary legislation,” it added.