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Brazil's measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing

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Paris, 21 December 2023 - Brazil has made important strides to improve its system to combat money laundering and terrorist financing and is achieving some positive results. Brazil needs to strengthen cooperation and coordination between certain authorities and improve prosecution of money laundering.

The FATF/GAFILAT mutual evaluation report of Brazil underscores the country's improved international cooperation, risk assessment, and policy coordination since the last evaluation in 2010. However, key challenges remain, including the need for enhanced cooperation and coordination among authorities, particularly the Police, Prosecution Authority, and Tax Office. The country also needs to show major improvements to prosecution of money laundering, including to tackle environmental crimes and laundering of proceeds.

As a major economy in the world, Brazil has the largest banking and securities sectors in South America and as a result, is exposed to various cross-border threats, further aggravated by the porosity of the borders.

The FATF/GAFILAT mutual evaluation report of Brazil highlights that Brazil has a deep understanding of its money laundering risks, in particular for money laundering risks arising from corruption, organized crime, tax crime, drug trafficking, and environmental crimes.

Brazil demonstrated strong supervision of most of the financial sector, but the country should address the gaps in supervision of its non-financial sector which is currently leaving sectors such as lawyers completely unregulated for AML/CFT/CPF. Brazil should enhance the recovery of assets linked to crime and terrorism. With the exception of corruption-related assets, its confiscation results are not entirely in line with the risks the country faces.

Despite initiatives like REDESIM to detect misuse of companies challenges remain in ensuring full transparency of business entities, with a largely unpopulated database for beneficial ownership information.

Brazil's measures to combat the financing of terrorism have improved in recent years but there is need for significant advancements in implementation for the measures to be more effective. The risks of terrorist financing are relatively low in Brazil, however, the country should enhance risk understanding and mitigation from terrorist financing risks.

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