Spain's progress in strengthening measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing

20 March 2018 – Spain reported back on the progress it has made in strengthening the framework to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing since the 2014 Mutual Evaluation.  As a result of this progress, the FATF has re-rated the country on 3 Recommendations. Spain is now rated Compliant on 28 of the 40 Recommendations.

Spain has been in a regular follow-up process following the adoption of its mutual evaluation report, which assessed the effectiveness of the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) measures and their compliance with the FATF Recommendations. In line with the FATF Procedures for mutual evaluations, Spain reported back to the FATF on the progress it has made to strengthen its AML/CFT framework, in particular the criminalisation of terrorist financing taking into account the new requirements on the criminalisation of foreign terrorist fighters.

This report analyses Spain’s progress in addressing the technical compliance deficiencies identified in the mutual evaluation report. To reflect this progress, the FATF has re-rated Spain on the following Recommendations:

5 - Terrorist financing offence

16 - Wire transfers

39 - Extradition

The report also looks at whether Spain’s measures meet the requirements of FATF Recommendations that have changed since their 2014 mutual evaluation, taking into account any new measures introduced since their mutual evaluation. The FATF agreed to maintain the rating of Largely Compliant for Recommendation 8.

The FATF welcomes the steps that Spain has taken to improve its technical compliance with Recommendations on targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism & terrorist financing and proliferation financing (Recommendations 6 and 7 respectively); however, the progress was insufficient to justify a re-rating of these Recommendations.  

Mutual Evaluation Report of Spain - December 2014