Malta’s financial regulator has highlighted its work to crank up enforcement and supervision of anti-money laundering provisions, in a status update published just days before an international vote about Malta’s robustness at stopping financial crime.

The MFSA noted that it has set up a financial crime compliance function staffed by 20 trained employees as well as separate due diligence and risk functions to provide an additional layer of checks to complement the agency’s supervisory role.

In its status update on its implementation of the 2019 MFSA Anti-Money Laundering/Countering Funding of Terrorism (AML/CFT) supervisory strategy, the regulator also noted that it had dedicated 743 training hours to all employees by the end of 2020, focused on AML and anti-bribery programmes, bolstered its enforcement function with additional employees and increased its focus on the fitness, competence and personal liability of senior management.

The MFSA added that its Trusts and Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Register had seen a tenfold increase in registrations since it was launched in 2019 and that it had also revised its regime for Company Service Providers.

MFSA Head of Financial Crime Compliance Anthony Eddington said that the regulator’s examination capacity had increased from 25 in 2019 to 81 in 2020.

He added: “Our measure of success is not just in numbers but rather in the improvement of compliance culture of financial services operators in Malta. We have seen a positive shift in this respect, with real investment in back-office systems, controls and people. It is more difficult today to launder money through our financial system or to finance terrorism from Malta’s financial institutions.”

Malta will on Wednesday learn whether it has been greylisted by an international body of financial crime analysts, in a key vote that could have a significant impact on the country’s economic future.

The FATF plenary vote comes after 18 months of assessment of the country’s financial and banking sector, following alarms raised in 2019 that frameworks in place were inadequate.