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US Treasury rejects inclusion of AS and other US territories on EU ‘high risk’ list

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fili@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The US Treasury Department has voiced “significant concerns” and “rejects” the inclusion of American Samoa and three other US territories on the European Commission’s list of countries with “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks”.

The list, which includes 23 countries/territories - including neighboring Samoa - was released early yesterday morning by the European Commission, which announced in a statement that the list is to protect the European Union’s (EU) financial system by better preventing money laundering and terrorist financing risks.

“We have established the strongest anti-money laundering standards in the world, but we have to make sure that dirty money from other countries does not find its way to our financial system,” said Vera Jourova, the Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality.

(Full details of the lengthy statement and list on EU’s website: europa.eu)

Ahead of the release of the EU’s list, Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga in a Feb. 8th letter asked the federal government to intervene, saying the inclusion of American Samoa is “unreasonable” because the US territory follows stringent federal financial institution laws and regulations.

Lolo’s letter was sent to Scott Rembrandt, Assistant Director for Strategic Policy in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the U.S. Treasury Department.

An ASG official told Samoa News that as of yesterday morning, there was no official response from Rembrandt and ASG will continue to work closely with the US Treasury, which issued yesterday a swift response to the European Commission.

According to the Treasury Department, the European Commission issued a list of purportedly high-risk jurisdictions “posing significant threats” to the European Union’s financial system as a result of strategic deficiencies in their Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terror (AML/CFT) regimes.

“The U.S. Department of the Treasury has significant concerns about the substance of the list and the flawed process by which it was developed,” the federal government said, noting that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the global standard-setting body for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.

The FATF, which includes the U.S, the European Commission, 15 EU member states, and 20 other jurisdictions, already develops a list of high-risk jurisdictions with AML/CFT deficiencies as part of a careful and comprehensive process. “Beyond our concerns with the listing methodology [by the European Commission], the Treasury Department rejects the inclusion of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands on the list,” the statement says.

The feds point out that the “commitments and actions” of the U.S. in implementing the “FATF standards extend to all U.S. territories.”

It says, “Moreover, the Treasury Department was not provided any meaningful opportunity to discuss with the European Commission its basis for including the listed U.S. territories.”

“The Treasury Department does not expect U.S financial institutions to take the European Commission’s list into account in their AML/CFT policies and procedures,” according to the lengthy statement which also criticized the European Commission for failing to provide affected jurisdictions with any meaningful opportunity to challenge their inclusion or otherwise address issues identified by the Commission.

The feds criticized the European Commission for notifying the affected jurisdictions that they would be included on the list “only days before issuance” of the list.

Governments of the US territories were sent the US Treasury’s statement.