The European Union has added Monaco to the list of countries it considers to be at high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. The European Commission has updated the list of high-risk countries, but again did not take Russia into account. This is reported by Politico, UNN reports.
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The super-rich Mediterranean principality in the updated anti-rating is next to countries such as Syria, Myanmar and Burkina Faso.
The European Commission has also added Venezuela to the blacklist of high-risk jurisdictions, while excluding the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar. Russia was again bypassed in the updated list.
The decision was published after an almost week-long delay amid growing speculation about the EU executive body's decisions. After all, the issue of ranking countries according to this criterion is very politically sensitive.
Last year, the European Parliament, like the Council, rejected the first attempt to exclude the UAE from the list. There were heated discussions behind closed doors around this decision.
Legislators have also put pressure on the EU executive to include Russia on the list, as global watchdog FATF failed to blacklist Moscow last year due to resistance from the BRICS alliance, which includes Russia.
Last week, Czech MEP Luděk Niedermayer of the European People's Party called on the European Commission to seriously consider blacklisting Russia.
However, the EU executive generally agrees with the FATF, founded in 1989 by the G7 countries, so it included Monaco in the list of countries that have shortcomings in the fight against money laundering, and did not make decisions regarding Russia.