The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has recently placed Lebanon under the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, alternatively known as the grey list. The FATF commented that Lebanon has committed in October 2024 to work on bolstering the effectiveness of its Anti-money laundering (AML)/ Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regime notwithstanding the prevailing challenging social, economic and security situation. FATF added that ever since its adoption of the Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) in May 2023, Lebanon has achieved progress on several recommended actions, such as the issuance of a circular for banks and financial institutions to establish a department dedicated to combating bribery & corruption related crimes. FATF also revealed that Lebanon will continue to cooperate with the FATF to implement an action plan that revolves around the following points:

-       Conducting assessments of specific terrorist financing and money laundering risks while ensuring that policies and measures are taken to mitigate these risks

-       Improving mechanisms to ensure the prompt and effective execution of requests for mutual legal assistance, extradition and asset recovery

-       Enhancing the risk understanding for Designated Non-Financial Business and Professions (DNFBPs) and implementing effective sanctions for any breaches of AML/CFT obligations 

-       Ensuring beneficial ownership information is up-to-date and that there are adequate sanctions and risk-mitigation policies in place

-       Enhancing authorities’ use of products of the Financial Intelligence Unit

-       Showing a sustained increase in money-laundering related investigations, prosecutions and court rulings

-       Ameliorating its approach to asset recovery and identifying & seizing illicit cross-border movements of currency and precious metals and stones

-       Pursuing terrorism financing investigations and sharing information with foreign partners related to these investigations

-       Improving the prompt implementation of financial sanctions, particularly at DNFBPs and some non-banking financial institutions

-       Enhancing the monitoring of high-risk Non Profit Organizations