Posted: Friday, December 9, 2016. 3:09 p.m. CST.
By BBN Staff: A national money laundering risk assessment training workshop will be held from December 13- 15 in Belize.
Money Laundering/Terrorist Financing (ML/TF) National Risk Assessment (NRA) is a process of identifying and evaluating the money laundering and terrorist financing risks in a particular jurisdiction and analyzing the main sources and drivers of the risks in order to develop effective and risk-based policies and actions, and allocate the available resources in the most efficient way to eliminate, control and mitigate the identified risks.
This workshop is being organized jointly by the World Bank (WB) and the Belize Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). Since the NRA tool has been designed as a self-assessment tool, the NRA process will be led by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority acting through the FIU and assessments will completely belong to the working group.
The WB Team will provide the NRA templates/documents, technical assistance on the use of the NRA tool, and review/comments on the NRA results; in order to contribute to the quality and depth of the assessment.
Following this workshop, the working group will collect the missing data/ information and complete the risk assessment.
In most countries completing the risk assessment takes approximately 6 months. The third phase (conclusion) will include another workshop which facilitates the final review of the risk assessment results as well as the design of risk based action plans.
An increasing importance is being placed on the assessment of ML/TF risks by the FATF since national strategies, policy decisions and actions must correspond to the risks faced by each jurisdiction and this will lead to effective implementation of FATF Recommendations.
The World Bank’s National ML/TF Risk Assessment tool is a self-assessment tool, which has 9 modules as the building blocks. WB recommends establishment of a working group that consists of teams corresponding to various modules, and undertaking of the national risk assessment in three phases.
Following the preparation phase (Phase I), this training workshop marks the beginning to the assessment phase (Phase II). During this workshop, the participants will familiarize themselves with ML/TF risk assessment concept, learn the structure, features and functions of the NRA Tool and start using it.
The roadmap and milestones for the following phases will be discussed and decided by the working group during this workshop.
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