On 13th August 2014, the Basel Institute on Governance published the 2014 Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index. This follows the other two previous releases issued since 2012. The Basel AML Index aims to assess the risk of money laundering in 162 countries across the world (Public version). To that end, the Index uses 14 indicators based on data from various publicly available sources such as the FATF, World Bank, Transparency International and World Economic Forum. This means that the Basel Institute does not generate its own data.

All that said, from the new Index the following outcome is possible to highlight:

• The top 10 countries identified as the highest risk countries are Iran, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Tajikistan, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Mali, Swaziland, Mozambique and Myanmar.
• Among the OECD countries, Austria, Germany, Greece, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Turkey are the worst performers with an above average high risk score.
• The Sub-Saharan African region has the greatest risk worldwide with Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Swaziland and Uganda as the top highest risk countries within their region.
• Croatia, Dominica, Grenada, Macedonia and St. Lucia have seen the biggest improvements from the previous 2013 edition by significantly lowering their money laundering/terrorism financing risk scores.
• The countries that significantly worsened their scores in their assessment of AML/CFT frameworks are Brazil, Ivory Coast, Panama and Saudi Arabia.
• Among the top 20 countries, 14 are EU Members as follows: Finland, Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Belgium, Poland, Malta, Hungary, Sweden, Croatia, Portugal, Denmark, and Ireland.

As a consequence, given that the EU wants to be at the forefront of the battle against money laundering, it seems that the EU’s homework has been partially done. Whilst it is positive that more than two third of the best 20 countries is an EU Member, there is still an area of concern as major EU members and financial centres such as the UK, Germany, France and Italy are not ranked among those countries.

In light of the preliminary approval of a Proposal of the 4th EU AML Directive by the EU Parliament (last June), it can be hoped that once the proposal is approved, the consequent review of EU national legislations could tighten AML national regulations so that even those countries could improve their ranks contributing as well to ameliorate the EU’s position as a whole. It also can be added that these countries would not have excuses in not knowing their deficiencies once they will carry out their national risk assessment, as set out by the EU Proposal as a new national measure.