In February 2024, Namibia was officially listed on the Financial Action Task Force’s ‘Grey list’ or Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring.

In its statement, the FATF noted that, whilst Namibia has made progress on the last MER (September 2022)’s recommended actions to ensure a common understanding of Money Laundering/Terrorist Financing and Proliferation Financing risk across key stakeholders as well as improve international cooperation, it still needed to work on several aspects to implement its FATF action plan.

These include (1) strengthening its Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing risk based supervision through enhancing the human and resource capacities, conducting offsite and onsite inspections informed by supervisory risk assessment tools and applying effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions for breaches of AML/CFT obligations; (2) enhancing preventive measures through inspections and outreach to ensure that Financial Institutions and DNFBPs apply enhanced due diligence measures as well as Targeted Financial Sanctions obligations related to Terrorism Financing and Proliferation Financing without delay; (3) increasing the filing of beneficial ownership information of legal persons and arrangements, and applying remedial actions and/or effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions against breaches of compliance with beneficial ownership obligations; (4) providing the FIU with adequate human and financial resources, as well as trainings, to improve operational and strategic analysis; (5) improving the cooperation between the FIU and LEAs to enhance the use and integration of financial intelligence in investigations; (6) enhancing the operational capabilities of authorities involved in Money Laundering and TF investigations and prosecutions by providing them with adequate resources and targeted trainings; (7) demonstrating the LEAs’ capabilities to effectively investigate and prosecute ML/TF cases; and (8) approving the amended National Counter Terrorism Strategy.

Namibia made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and ESAAMLG to strengthen the effectiveness of its Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing regime. It requested support for technical assistance from the EU Global Facility in 2024, on a number of specialised topics. As a result, the project conducted an initial scoping mission in August 2024. A first technical assistance activity was held concomitantly on the topic of Beneficial Ownership.