Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera said in a statement that FATF in Paris informed the removal of Sri Lanka’s name from the blacklist commending the new measures taken by the country on financial security.
Sri Lanka was first included in the blacklist in 2011. By 2012, Sri Lanka was listed in the list as a dangerous country with no commitment to the financial security plan.
The statement said the government together with the Central Bank and other financial institutions, has taken several measures since 2016 to ensure the financial security of the country.
As a result, Sri Lanka was declared a cooperating state in 2016 and the FATF put Sri Lanka on a grey list from November 2017.
Sri Lanka set out a sound framework to bring the commitment of all the stakeholders to enhance the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) standards in order to improve its compliance and the country rating.
It reported the progress achieved in the implementation of the action plan regularly to the FATF.