The President’s Invitation
A special discussion on Sri Lanka’s third Mutual Evaluation (3rd Mutual Evaluation) concerning international standards on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) was held this morning (03) at the Presidential Secretariat under the patronage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Addressing the meeting, the President emphasised that before demonstrating the country’s integrity to external parties as a government, Sri Lanka must first be accountable to itself in ensuring good governance. He invited all stakeholders to collectively fulfil the responsibilities entrusted to them at the institutional level in order to achieve this objective.
These evaluations are conducted based on the 40 recommendations issued by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to prevent money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The process involves an in-depth assessment of the effectiveness of a country’s established financial systems, its legal framework, and the deployment of resources. This process is referred to as a “Mutual Evaluation.”
In Sri Lanka, these supervisory activities are carried out by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, with the participation of the Financial Intelligence Unit and approximately 25 state institutions. The required technical advisory support for this process is being provided by Dr Gordon Hook.
It was also discussed that Sri Lanka had previously been internationally “grey-listed” in 2017 due to failures in earlier evaluations conducted in 2006 and 2014–2015. The President further noted that, in order to prevent a recurrence of such a situation, this programme must be successfully implemented as a national priority under strong political leadership.