THE European Union(EU) has added Namibia to the list of high risk jurisdictions despite the country making progress in complying with eight benchmarks set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The benchmarks are vital in Namibia avoiding financial blacklisting.
“Despite the significant progress made in addressing the recommendations in the FATF Action Plan, the Council of the European Union (EU) added Namibia to its own list of high- risk jurisdictions on 10 June 2025. The listing of Namibia was expected as it is a normal practice for the EU to align its list to that one of the FATF grey list, although the EU had delayed placing Namibia on this list last year,”Financial Intelligence Centre Director Bryan Eiseb said in a statement on Friday.
Namibia was greylisted by the FATF on 23 February 2024.
Eiseb said the decision by the EU cakes at a time Namibia has been commended by the FATF for addressing most of the strategic deficiencies on its Action Plan.
“Initially Namibia had 13 strategic deficiencies which impaired its effectiveness in implementing the anti-money laundering, counter terrorism financing and counter proliferation financing framework,” he said.
Namibia recently submitted its second compulsory progress report to the FATF Africa Joint Group.
“ Namibia has now remediated eight. In other words, Namibia fully executed the necessary actions
or applied the controls to the satisfaction of the FATF. The country remains with five action items that needs to
be remediated by May 2026,” Eiseb said.
He said the outstanding issues relates to cooperation between the Financial Intelligence Centre and Law Enforcement Agencies to enhance the use of financial intelligence in investigations, a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of money laundering.
They also include adequate human and financial resources to enhance operational capabilities of investigating and prosecuting authorities and the ability of competent authorities to identify and investigate terrorist financing activities.
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