{"id":17902,"date":"2025-07-09T20:26:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T20:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=17902"},"modified":"2025-07-09T20:26:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T20:26:18","slug":"eu-to-remove-uae-and-gibraltar-from-money-laundering-grey-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=17902","title":{"rendered":"EU to remove UAE and Gibraltar from money laundering \u2018grey\u2019 list"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EU lawmakers have voted to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the bloc\u2019s \u201cgrey\u201d list of countries with lax money laundering controls, in a move set to ease talks towards a trade deal with Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

The two are among eight jurisdictions set to be removed from the list, which carries reputational damage and adds costs to transactions involving people or entities from listed countries, as financial institutions must carry out extra due diligence.<\/p>\n

Abu Dhabi had raised the issue as an irritant in trade talks with Brussels, prompting Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d, the EU\u2019s trade commissioner, to ask parliamentarians from his social democrat grouping to support the European Commission\u2019s proposal to remove the UAE and other countries from the list, said several people present at a meeting ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n

The removals will take effect in the coming weeks after publication in the official journal.<\/p>\n

Gibraltar\u2019s delisting was controversial among Spanish members of the European parliament, as Madrid claims sovereignty over the British overseas territory.<\/p>\n

Last year, MEPs rejected a move to remove Gibraltar and the UAE from the list over that issue and worries about the latter\u2019s standards on anti-money-laundering \u2014 concerns that were raised again this year. <\/p>\n

A majority of groupings in the parliament, meanwhile, backed adding Russia to the grey list during a hearing last week, according to people who were present.<\/p>\n

But a last-minute pledge by the commission to reconsider listing Russia by the end of this year helped win support from a majority of MEPs for the commission\u2019s list of removals.<\/p>\n

The commission welcomed the outcome, saying it \u201cacknowledges the important and successful efforts undertaken by the countries that are being delisted in strengthening the effectiveness of their frameworks for fighting money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh, a minister of state in the UAE\u2019s foreign ministry, said the country welcomed the move. \u201cThe UAE remains a reliable and strategic partner to the EU, committed to ensuring AML\/CFT systems are not only robust, but also future-proof and capable of addressing emerging global threats. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to unlocking the full potential of the UAE-EU partnership, fostering closer co-operation, enhanced prosperity and shared security for our regions and peoples,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing grey list usually follows the one issued by the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body set up to combat terrorism financing and money laundering. FATF delisted the UAE and Gibraltar in 2024.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s membership of FATF was suspended a year after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but several countries with links to Russia are expected to oppose any move to add it to the FATF grey list.<\/p>\n

The EU could decide to list Russia independently of the FATF, but has so far resisted doing so for fear of litigation.<\/p>\n

Other countries to be removed from the list following Wednesday\u2019s vote are Barbados, Jamaica, Panama, the Philippines, Senegal and Uganda. <\/p>\n

The MEPs also voted to add Algeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Laos, Lebanon, Monaco, Namibia, Nepal and Venezuela to the grey list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free EU lawmakers have voted to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the bloc\u2019s \u201cgrey\u201d list of countries with lax money laundering controls, in a move set to ease talks towards a trade deal with Abu Dhabi. The two are among eight jurisdictions set to be removed from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[7237,1528,1103,1529,104,83,3651],"class_list":{"0":"post-17902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial-crime","8":"tag-gibraltar","9":"tag-grey","10":"tag-laundering","11":"tag-list","12":"tag-money","13":"tag-remove","14":"tag-uae"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}