BY PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
MYANMAR has been ranked as the world’s highest-risk money laundering jurisdiction in the 2024 Basel AML Index.
Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo were behind it in second and third last place respectively, while African nations including Gabon and Guinea-Bissau made up much of the rest of the bottom 10.
At the other end of the scale, San Marino was ranked as having the lowest money laundering risk.
European countries, including Iceland and Finland at second and third respectively, made up much of the 10 best jurisdictions.
The list is compiled by the Basel Institute on Governance, an independent non-profit organization which describes itself as working to strengthen governance and counter corruption.
Under the Basel AML Index, countries are assessed under 18 indicators. These include the quality of their AML legislation, their corruption and bribery risk, financial transparency and political and legal Risk.
The Basel Institute said that most indicators chosen for the index have their own scoring system, with individual indicator scores collected and normalized using the “min-max method” into a 0-10 system, where 10 indicates the highest risk level.
The Top 10 Countries are:
- San Marino – 2.96
- Iceland- 3.00
- Finland – 3.07
- Estonia – 3.16
- Andorra – 3.29
- Sweden – 3.45
- Denmark – 3.50
- Slovenia – 3.54
- Lithuania – 3.54
- Greece – 3.66
The Bottom 10 are:
- Myanmar – 8.17
- Haiti – 7.92
- The Democratic Republic Of The Congo – 7.73
- Chad – 7.60
- Venezuela – 7.59
- Lao PDR – 7.53
- Central African Republic – 7.49
- Gabon – 7.48
- Republic Of Congo – 7.28
- Guinea-Bissau – 7.28
Israel was ranked 15th, Australia 17th, the United Kingdom was 25th and the U.S. in 63rd.
Overall, the report said that since 2013, there has been a 12% improvement in technical compliance with FATF recommendations.
However, it added that the average effectiveness of AML measures globally remains low at 28%.
The effectiveness of investigations, prosecutions and sanctions was found to be particularly poor, scoring the lowest score of just 20%.
The full Basel AML Index is available HERE.
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