The Director of GIF, Ms. Ng Man Seong, and the Deputy Director, Ms. Chu Un I held a media gathering on 27 July 2017, with an aim to provide a detailed explanation of the Mutual Evaluation Report of Macao SAR.

In July, GIF and representatives of different government agencies formed a delegation of 30 persons to attend the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) Annual Meeting in Sri Lanka, in which the Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) of Macao SAR was adopted by all APG members on 19 July 2017. Macao SAR obtains an outstanding result in the MER, which places Macao SAR among one of the jurisdictions with the most comprehensive anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) legal framework. This achievement is a result of the long-term support and cooperation within the AML/CFT Working Group and the private sectors over the years.

During the meeting, Ms. Ng briefly explained about the assessment team and the methodology for this assessment, followed by a review on the ratings of technical compliance and effectiveness outcomes in the MER of Macao SAR.

For the technical compliance assessment which deals with completeness of legal and institutional framework, Macao SAR has obtained 37 compliant and largely compliant ratings out of the 40 FATF Recommendations and only 2 partially compliant and 1 non-compliant ratings. With the 11 effectiveness outcomes, Ms. Ng particularly stated the 6 substantial effectiveness outcomes with higher ratings, which mainly assess Macao SAR’s efforts in international cooperation, supervision, legal persons & arrangements, use of financial intelligence, terrorist financing preventive measures & financial sanctions, and proliferation financing financial sanctions. Ms. Ng further explained the main shortcomings of the 3 outcomes with moderate ratings and the 2 outcomes with lower ratings.

GIF aims to take the opportunity of this media gathering to allow the media and public to have a better understanding of the efforts exerted by the Macao SAR Government, which is also recognized by international organization, in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and financing for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.