AMMAN, 5 June 2022– The EU Global Facility on Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism in cooperation with the Anti-Money Laundering & Counter Terrorist Financing Unit and the Central Bank of Jordan organised a series of multi-stakeholders trainings to present the upcoming Beneficial Ownership Guidance and discuss the effective implementation of international standards related to the transparency of beneficial ownership.
These training sessions are conducted in the framework of the implementation of the technical assistance programme funded by the European Union to support Jordan in enhancing beneficial ownership transparency in the country, which resulted in the preparation by the CBJ of a new guidance on BO transparency for reporting entities subject to the provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Law. This new guidance will assist these reporting entities to identify the beneficial owners of legal persons and legal arrangements in compliance with the requirements of the customer due diligence measures they are required to conduct.
These sessions, held in Amman, were delivered by international experts from the EU Global Facility and covered topics such as how criminals misuse corporate entities to commit financial crime, the FATF and EU beneficial ownership disclosure standards, and approaches and operational considerations relating to identifying of red flags of corporate entities misuse as part of regulatory authorisations and ongoing supervision. Practical case studies were also discussed with the participants.
The Central Bank of Jordan team also presented the new guidance on BO transparency and encouraged the audience to provide feedback on the content so has to complement it prior to its publication.
Deputy Chief of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Unit of Jordan, Ala’ Bani Fawaz, stressed the importance of identifying the BO from corporate entities in order to prevent their misuse in committing financial crimes, money laundering and terrorist financing.
He also presented key points of the guidance that will be officially issued soon, which contains useful practical examples and guidance for the entities on how to identify the ultimate beneficial ownership within legal structures.
M. Alexandre Taymans, Key Expert on Beneficial Ownership for the Global Facility praised the dedication of the Jordanian authorities and the efforts made since the start of the joint work with the Global Facility in January 2021 in implementing measures to enhance the transparency of legal persons within the jurisdiction, pointing to the need to focus as from now on their effective implementation.
This project is funded by the European Union.