Ireland has an effective regime for fighting money laundering but fails to use it to seize enough of the illicit proceeds or to secure a single criminal conviction through the courts, according to an international peer review.
Following an in-depth investigation, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said last week that Ireland fell short when identifying the risks posed by cross-border money laundering, given the large size of the country’s financial industry.
“While Ireland appears to have strong understanding of risks based on domestic crime, more could be done to clearly identify Ireland’s international money laundering risks,” it said.
The Central Bank of Ireland, however, received a clean bill of health for policing money laundering within the banking industry.
The FATF concluded, though, that