Argentina's measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing

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Language

English

Country

Argentina

Mutual Evaluation Report of Argentina - 2024

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Argentina-Mutual-Evaluation-Report-2024.pdf
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Paris, 18 December 2024 - Argentina has strengthened its laws and processes on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) since its previous mutual evaluation (2010) which highlighted substantial gaps in compliance.

However, Argentina faces shortcomings in delivering effective outcomes, apart from cooperation with international partners where it is achieving positive results.

The joint FATF/GAFILAT mutual evaluation of Argentina assessed the effectiveness of Argentina’s measures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, and their level of compliance with the FATF Recommendations, at the time of the on-site visit in March 2024.

An upper-middle income country, Argentina faces money laundering risks primarily from domestic threats such as drug trafficking, tax evasion, corruption, smuggling, fraud, and human trafficking.

Argentina must improve its money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) risk understanding, in particular laundering from corruption and through informal financial services. Argentina must also increase prosecution of money laundering and improve confiscation in line with its risk profile. Although Argentina has invested significant efforts to enhance the identification, prosecution, and conviction of money laundering and achieved some positive convictions over the review period, the 91 convictions secured is a relatively low number given the size and context of Argentina and although authorities secured confiscations in almost all cases, amounts are modest.

On terrorist financing, Argentina has a generally adequate regulatory framework, but the limited number of investigations, lack of prosecutions and the absence of convictions is not entirely consistent with the country’s medium-low risk profile and should improve.

Argentina demonstrates strengths in domestic cooperation and coordination between agencies, with public prosecutors and investigative judges using financial intelligence from a broad range of sources. The report provides recommendations to protect the operational independence of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

Issues were also identified with suspicious transaction reporting from high-risk sectors such as securities, real estate and virtual asset service providers, limited use of intelligence from cross-border cash movements, and low levels of terrorist financing-related intelligence.

In terms of international cooperation, Argentina provides constructive legal assistance and extradition and provides different types of international cooperation, with only some areas for improvement.

Argentina has a well-designed AML/CFT supervision framework. While the supervision is risk-based to some extent, it is not achieving greater effectiveness because of serious human and information technology (IT) resource constraints, especially in the case of the FIU. Financial institutions were found to have an overall good understanding of money laundering risks but an uneven understanding of terrorist financing risk.

Overall, 'gatekeeper professions' such as lawyers, accountants, trust and company service providers, and real estate agents (Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions) understand their main ML/TF risks in line with Argentina’s National Risk Assessments. However, the understanding of sector-specific ML/TF risks within the respective sectors is uneven, and at times limited.

On non-profit organisations (NPOs), Argentina should take a more risk-based approach to mitigating the risk of abuse of NPOs, in line with Recommendation 8 of the FATF Standards, so as not to unduly disrupt or discourage legitimate NPO activities.

Following the assessment, Argentina is placed on “enhanced follow-up” and will report back to the FATF in one year.

 

Ratings

Effectiveness

Ratings that reflect the extent to which a country's measures are effective. The assessment is conducted on the basis of 11 immediate outcomes, which represent key goals that an effective AML/CFT system should achieve.

Ratings that reflect the extent to which a country's measures are effective. The assessment is conducted on the basis of 11 immediate outcomes, which represent key goals that an effective AML/CFT system should achieve.

Argentina Mutual Evaluation 2024

IO1
ME
IO2
SE
IO3
ME
IO4
ME
IO5
ME
IO6
ME
IO7
ME
IO8
ME
IO9
ME
IO10
ME
IO11
LE

HE = high level of effectiveness   |   SE = substantial level of effectiveness    |   ME = moderate level of effectiveness   |   LE = low level of effectiveness

Technical Compliance

Ratings which reflect the extent to which a country has implemented the technical requirements of the FATF Recommendations.

Argentina Mutual Evaluation 2024

R.1 - Assessing risk & applying risk-based approach
LC
R.2 - National cooperation and coordination
C
R.3 - Money laundering offence
LC
R.4 - Confiscation and provisional measures
LC
R.5 - Terrorist financing offence
LC
R.6 - Targeted financial sanctions related to terrorism & terrorist financing
PC
R.7 - Targeted financial sanctions related to proliferation
NC
R.8 - Non-profit organisations
PC
R.9 - Financial institution secrecy laws
C
R.10 - Customer due diligence
LC
R.11 - Record keeping
C
R.12 - Politically exposed persons
C
R.13 - Correspondent banking
C
R.14 - Money or value transfer services
PC
R.15 - New technologies
PC
R.16 - Wire transfers
PC
R.17 - Reliance on third parties
PC
R.18 - Internal controls and foreign branches and subsidiaries
PC
R.19 - Higher-risk countries
C
R.20 - Reporting of suspicious transactions
C
R.21 - Tipping-off and confidentiality
LC
R.22 - DNFBPs: Customer due diligence
PC
R.23 - DNFBPs: Other measures
PC
R.24 - Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons
PC
R.25 - Transparency and beneficial ownership of legal arrangements
PC
R.26 - Regulation and supervision of financial institutions
LC
R.27 - Powers of supervisors
C
R.28 - Regulation and supervision of DNFBPs
LC
R.29 - Financial intelligence units
C
R.30 - Responsibilities of law enforcement and investigative authorities
LC
R.31 - Powers of law enforcement and investigative authorities
LC
R.32 - Cash couriers
LC
R.33 - Statistics
LC
R.34 - Guidance and feedback
LC
R.35- Sanctions
C
R.36 - International instruments
LC
R.37 - Mutual legal assistance
C
R.38 - Mutual legal assistance: freezing and confiscation
LC
R.39 - Extradition
C
R.40 - Other forms of international cooperation
PC

C = compliant   |   LC = largely compliant     |   PC = partially compliant   |   NC = non-compliant

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