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This is an international organization that promotes polices and procedures for financial institutions worldwide to follow in an effort to combat Money Laundering and Terrorism.
FATF focused a lot of its energy on offshore banking, offshore corporations, offshore trusts, and offshore stock brokers. FATF did not seem to be very interested in offshore taxation directly. FATF made things like the Austrian Sparbuch accounts go away and numbered bank accounts go away too. The days when you could go into an offshore lawyer’s office and buy a corporation complete with an already opened bank account for cash along with 200 pre-signed checks was over forever.
FATF are the people whose policies inconvenience you every time you wish to engage in a financial transaction anywhere in the world. We have no idea how effective or ineffective their practices and policies are. All we know is that they are in place and they have changed offshore banking and offshore corporations globally. Perhaps the world is a better place to live in today because of these policies, we do not know so, and can only hope so.
| Bahamas | Lebanon | Panama |
| Cayman Islands | Liechtenstein | Philippines |
| Cook Islands | Marshall Islands | Russia |
| Dominica | Nauru | St Kitts and Nevis |
| Israel | Niue | St Vincent and the Grenadines |
| Egypt | Guatemala | Indonesia | Nigeria |
| Grenada | Hungary | Myanmar | Ukraine |
In the year 2006 only Myanmar was on the blacklist. All the other countries complied sufficiently to be removed from the blacklist.
The blacklist is sort of a wake up call to implement better practices and procedures usually with deadlines. Only three times has FATF implemented counter measures to countries and they have all been removed. The three countries were: Myanmar, Nauru and Ukraine
These countries were eventually pressured to comply with FATF guidelines to get off the blacklist. Panama hired a lawyer who is a genius to write their anti-money laundering laws. He fought vigorously to show they were up to standards and got Panama removed from the blacklist a few years ago while leaving Panama intact as an asset protection tax haven and offshore jurisdiction. Panama still has anonymous bearer share corporations and anonymous foundations. The man was simply brilliant.
FATF made 40 recommendations to be followed by financial institutions to combat money laundering and terrorism and they can be found here:
Money Laundering: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/
They then came up with an additional nine recommendations to prevent terrorist financing which you can access through this link:
Prevent Terrorist Financing: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/
These and above links came from: