The Director of the Secretariat of the Independent Anti-Corruption Advisory Committee (CCIA) Ion Guzun and the President of the Moldovan Bankers’ League Dumitru Ursu discussed the findings and the recommendations pertaining to the banking sector formulated in the report “The Offshore Republic”: Review of factors leading to systemic fraud and money laundering in Moldova’s banking, financial and insurance sectors. The report is available in English here and in Romanian here.
Specifically, the following issues were examined:
- the procedure of appointment of future candidates to the positions of Governor and Deputy Governors of the National Bank of Moldova (NBM);
- the capacity to document money laundering red flags;
- the integration of combating money laundering in bank auditing;
- the publication of audit reports of banks and information about ultimate beneficial owners of commercial banks;
Also, Mr. Ursu mentioned the progress made by the NBM with the support from the USAID Project “Transparency of the Financial Sector in Moldova”, the National Bank of Romania and the Dutch Central Bank. The legislative amendments regarding the competence of the NBM and the National Commission for Financial Markets were also discussed. During the meeting, the ongoing efforts of the NBM to enhance the mechanisms of combating money laundering and the necessity for consolidation of similar efforts in the case of commercial banks were highlighted.
