Speaking in a debate on the new money laundering and terrorist financing regulations, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown questions the Economic Secretary to the Treasury about who will maintain the UK’s new autonomous list of high-risk third countries.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Who will be responsible for maintaining the list? Will it be Her Majesty’s Treasury? What will be the procedure to review it so that countries may come on to it and existing countries may come off it if they no longer meet the criteria?
John Glen (The Economic Secretary to the Treasury)
I thank my hon. Friend for his reasonable question about the updating of the list. The Financial Action Task Force meets three times a year to determine the countries identified on its public lists. As such, the UK’s new autonomous high-risk third countries list could be updated up to three times a year to mirror the decisions made by FATF. We will look at that carefully. FATF monitors the UK—indeed, it did a mutual evaluation of the UK in December 2018 and gave us one of the highest ever rankings—and constantly updates countries who are high risk around the world.