APG preliminary evaluation released Taiwan still has 6 major defects

The team arranged by Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) visited Taiwan for a two-week assessment of the country’s anti-money laundering practices. The evaluation ended today (November 16th) successfully. Although the evaluation report has not been officially released, the team took the lead in presenting the preliminary report. The team affirmed that Taiwan has made significant progress in the past two years with the support of the government and the cooperation between the public and private sectors.

"High expectations, cautious optimism." Luo Bing Cheng, the minister without portfolio of Executive Yuan, said in responding whether Taiwan can be upgraded to the "general tracking list".

Taiwan successfully left the "transition tracking list" in July last year and aims to upgrade to "general tracking list". APG’s evaluation of Taiwan’s anti-money laundering practices started at November 5th and ended today. The team consists of 9 members from the United States, South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Egypt, other countries and the members from the secretariat of APG.

“The team also affirmed Taiwan"s ability to provide mutual legal assistance, a well-functioning financial intelligence center and a terrorist financing mechanism.” said David Shannon, the team leader.

Taiwan has signed MOU with multi-partners and has sent a number of foreign legal secretaries or police liaison officers for interest exchanging and the financial intelligence center has played a leading role. In addition, the coordination of terrorist financing mechanism performed well.

Although the team gave affirmation of the progress, it also pointed out some of the shortcomings.

Firstly, Taiwan’s financial institutions are too dependent on the money laundering characterization issued by the authorities. Secondly, it is necessary to strengthen risk-based management. Thirdly, financial supervision should deepen the verification mechanism of the overseas financial center OBU. Fourthly, Taiwan should strengthen the transparency of legal entities and beneficiaries. Fifthly, the sentence of money laundering is too light. Lastly, the decree of non-proliferation is still missing.

The evaluation team finally put forward three suggestions. Firstly, Taiwan should continue to complete and implement national anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism strategies. Secondly, APG"s third round of mutual assessment coordination mechanism should be institutionalized to support ongoing measures and ensured policy enforcement against money laundering and financial crime. Lastly, international cooperation for specific high-risk threats should be strengthened.