Anti-Terror Watchdog Praises India's Measures, Flags Slow Money Laundering Trials

India has been placed in the regular follow-up category, a distinction it shares with only four other G20 countries.

Terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has said India has achieved a high level of technical compliance with its recommendations and taken significant steps to implement measures to tackle illicit finance. In a report released on Thursday, the watchdog has also, however, said the country needs to improve its system as the economy continues to grow, pointing to a need for faster trials for money laundering and terrorist financing. 

India has been placed in the regular follow-up category, a distinction it shares with only four other G20 countries. 

The mutual evaluation report says a joint FATF-APG (Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering)-EAG (Eurasian group on combating money laundering and financing of terrorism)  assessment of India's measures to tackle illicit finance has concluded that India has implemented an anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) framework which is achieving good results. The areas in which these results have been seen include risk understanding, access to beneficial ownership information and depriving criminals of their assets.