Could Jamaicans be banned from shopping online? What!!!

So Jamaica has been given four months to complete our plans to fight against money laundering and terrorism financing or risk being blacklisted.

The financial action task force, FATF, is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. The agency researches how money is laundered and terrorism is funded. It’s also responsible for setting global standards. 

Another part of their job is assessing whether countries are taking effective action against these crimes. Part of that assessment is identifying countries that do not comply with the FATF Standards.  If the country repeatedly fails to implement the Standards then it can be placed under increased monitoring or be labelled a High Risk Jurisdiction – more commonly referred to as the Grey and Black lists.

Jamaica has been on the Grey List since 2020. FATF gave Jamaica a list of around 40 recommendations on how to address the gaps. And gave us a deadline of January 2022 to fix it. 

So the time has been up. 

According to the task force, Jamaica has made some improvements. There’s a better understanding of the risks associated with money laundering and terrorism financing.  Also, resources to conduct investigations have increased. 

But it said there are still major gaps that the country agreed to address by the 2022 deadline. In a report last year, the agency noted that of the 40 recommendations, six recommendations were listed as compliant, 27 as largely compliant, and seven as partially compliant.

Now they’ve given us four months- until October- to complete the action or the country risks moving over to the blacklist. 

But what’s the big deal about being on the blacklist?

 Well, countries that are listed as high-risk or non-compliant by the FATF are subject to economic sanctions from its member countries, which include the United States, France and the UK.

Sanctions can include freezing Jamaica’s assets, to some merchants not allowing online transactions from Jamaica – so bye bye online shopping. If you sell stuff online, you already know the issues with getting money from PayPal to your Jamaican bank account, for example.

Plus economic sanctions would make international trade extremely difficult. So all in all, being blacklisted is not a good thing.

FYI – Jamaica wasn’t the only Caribbean country to be given a warning to make things right by October. Barbados and Haiti were also warned.