The Wall Street Journal on 9th October reported that more countries are showing heightened risks of exposure to money laundering, according to an annual ranking of countries assessing their money laundering risk by the Basel Institute on Governance, which released the 7th edition of its Basel AML Indes. It said 83 countries, or about two-thirds of those in the index, have a risk score above 5.0 and are therefore classified as having a significant risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. The most concerning aspect of the report, according to the institute, is that countries are not enforcing the laws they have on the books to fight money laundering. While some countries do not appear on the index, because of lack of data, Tajikistan was the top country for money laundering risk this year, followed by Mozambique, Afghanistan, Laos and Guinea-Bissau. No country has zero risk of money laundering but the lowest-risk countries, according to the index, are Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, New Zealand and Macedonia.
