LITTLE doubt about the big story of the week.
The FATF ‘Grey Listing’ of Malta was entirely a shock but it was still a surprise when it came on Wednesday afternoon – leaked by the Maltese authorities themselves in a damage control exercise.
Clearly the government thought, “let’s get this bad news out quickly so people are prepared when FATF officially announce it Friday.”
Behind the scenes however the Maltese authorities had created enormous problems for themselves. The US, UK and German authorities were not impressed with the lack of progress on the island in culture and process change. After scraping through the MONEYVAL review, the Maltese with the support of Brussels hoped it would convince FATF to follow suit.