The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has organized a workshop on the preparation for the mutual evaluation of the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) for Vietnam's anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Kim Anh chaired the Workshop.
Also attending the Workshop were representatives of the relevant Ministries and agencies, such as: the National Steering Committee on Anti-Money Laundering (NCC), the Anti-Money Laundering Department under the SBV, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam, the Supreme People's Court of Vietnam, the Government Inspectorate… On the APG’s side there were Mr. David Becker - Director for typologies at the APG Secretariat along with other members of the APG’s advance mission.
The SBV, as the permanent agency of the NCC, has made necessary preparations for the APG’s advance mission to work with the Ministries and agencies in preparation for the mutual evaluation of the Mission in November 2019. At the Workshop, Deputy Governor Nguyen Kim Anh shared that after receiving the notification of the APG at the 20th APG Annual Meeting in July 2017, Vietnam already started to prepare for the multilateral assessment of the APG on Vietnam’s mechanisms in combating money laundering and terrorist financing.
Accordingly, Vietnam has made efforts to continue to implement the National Action Plan on AML/CFT in the period of 2015 – 2020 (National Action Plan). With the support of the World Bank, Vietnam has conducted a national risk assessment on money laundering and terrorist financing; the SBV has submitted to the Prime Minister for promulgating the Action Plan for the APG’s mutual evaluation of Vietnam.
Vietnam has also organized the collection of information and data to develop the Technical Compliance Report (TC Report) and the Immediate Outcome Report (IO Report) to be submitted to the APG. Accordingly, Vietnam has sent the APG assessment team the TC Report on May 3, 2019 and the IO Report on July 12, 2019. Currently, Vietnam is preparing to respond to the assessment team's questions for the TC Report; and is also studying the issues raised by the assessment team regarding the contents which are expected to be clarified during the on-site working session in November 2019, as well as the preliminary comments on some contents of the IO Report.
Overview of the Workshop
However, following the APG mutual evaluation process and the methodology of the Financial Action Tasks Force (FATF), besides evaluating the technical compliance, the APG also assesses the effectiveness of Vietnam’s mechanisms in combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Therefore, the SBV recognizes that this mutual evaluation round for the APG member countries in general and especially for the developing countries like Vietnam in particular is actually more challenging than the previous multilateral assessment. Hence, preparing for the assessment is a significant challenge for both public and private sectors.
SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Kim Anh affirmed that although preparing for the mutual evaluation is a huge workload and a challenge for Vietnam but the SBV considers this is also a great opportunity to help Vietnam assess correctly the situation, identify the strengths and weaknesses in the mechanism of preventing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing; thereby Vietnam can take appropriate measures to ensure stable, healthy, safe and sustainable development on the basis of effective compliance with FATF recommendations.
Deputy Governor Nguyen Kim Anh believed that this work of the advance Mission will help the Mission's members and the representatives of Vietnam to have a unified and complete view of the political, economic and social contexts and the prevention and combat of money laundering and terrorist financing in Vietnam; thereby having the best preparation for the on-site evaluation in November.
After a brief overview of the evaluation principles and procedures, the meeting focused on the draft of the TC Report of the APG’s evaluation team. In addition, there will be preliminary discussions on Vietnam’s IO Report, the issues on risks/scopes and the preparations for the evaluation in Vietnam in November 2019.
Mr. David Becker - Director for typologies at the APG Secretariat, Head of the Evaluation Team - provided the Vietnamese officials with some preliminary information on the findings of the Evaluation Team regarding the TC Report. The principles and procedures of the APG’s evaluation are aimed to increase the understanding of the participants in the evaluation methodology, especially on the technical compliance; enhance the understanding of the participating officials on the information requirements to assess the effectiveness as well as enhance the understanding of the participating officials on the requirements for the multilateral assessment in Vietnam.
VA