Latest anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rankings indicates Ghana has gone up six places.
Ghana in 2018 was ranked 66 in anti-money laundering but the latest report released this year by the Swiss Basel Institute of Governance has pegged Ghana at 60th position.
Ghana’s score was 5.29 out of 10 in 2019 as against 5.32 in 2018. With regards to the ratings, a country is classified as doing well if the scoring is closer to 1, because the general score range is 1-10.
From the anti-money laundering report sighted by Ghanatalksbusiness, African Countries who performed better than Ghana were Egypt, South Africa and Gambia with the scores 4.5, 4.83, and 5.02 respectively.
However, Mozambique, Liberia and Kenya were the worst performers out the 19 African countries captured in the report .
The Basel AML Index
The Basel AML Index is an independent annual ranking that assesses the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) around the world.
Published by the Basel Institute on Governance since 2012, it provides risk scores based on data from 15 publicly available sources such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Transparency International, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. The risk scores cover five domains:
- Quality of AML/CFT Framework
- Bribery and Corruption
- Financial Transparency and Standards
- Public Transparency and Accountability
- Legal and Political Risks
The Public Edition of the Basel AML Index 2019 covers 125 countries with sufficient data to calculate a reliable ML/TF risk score.
How is the anti-money laundering rankings measured
The Basel AML Index does not measure the actual amount of money laundering or terrorist financing activity, but rather it is designed to assess the risk of such activity. ML/TF risk is understood as a broad risk area about a country’s vulnerability to ML/TF and its capacities to counter.
Data collection for the 2019 Public Edition of the Basel AML Index was completed in June 2019.
ALSO READ: Finance Ministry takes on EU for blacklisting Ghana over weak money laundering rules
