Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The Cyprius Securities and Exchange Commission communicates on sanctions stating the name of companies and the amount of the fine.
Nevertheless the keywords "laundering", AML, terrorisme are not found on the web site for the information of english-speaking investors.

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Cyprus was subject to an evaluation by the “Moneyval” Committee of the Council of Europe for the third time between 3 and 9 April 2005.
The assessment report was adopted at the 18th Plenary Meeting of the Council of Europe’s “Moneyval” Committee held in Strasbourg between 31 January and 3 February 2006. The assessment report was based on Cyprus’s laws and regulations as well as other information and details provided by the various competent
authorities and bodies of the public and private sectors during the evaluation team’s visit.
As far as the FAFT Recs are concerned, Cyprus was assessed and rated for its level of compliance against the 49 Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”).
The ratings are based on five levels: “Compliant”, “Largely Compliant”, “Partially Compliant”, “Non Compliant” and “Non Applicable”
Cyprus complies with 17 Recs, and is largely compliant with 22 Recs.
Cyprius complies partially with 10 Recs.
Therefore, Cyprus scores 39, against Belgium’s 41, Hungary’s 39, Slovenia’s 38, Switzerland’s 32, Norway’s 31, Ireland’s 28, Sweden’s 27 and Australia’s 26. It is also very important to note that Cyprus has not registered any “Non-compliant” ratings, whereas Australia has 10 such ratings, Ireland 5, Sweden 5, Norway 4, Switzerland 3, Slovenia 2, Belgium1 and Hungary 1.

See assessment


See comment from the Central bank of Cyprius on the assessment

The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring mechanism, the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) has published three weeks ago its Second Round Evaluation Report on Cyprus. The report has been made public with the agreement of the Cypriot authorities.

GRECO’s Second Evaluation Round focuses on measures taken to recover the proceeds of corruption, to prevent and combat corruption in public administration and to prevent companies being used to shield corruption.

GRECO addresses a series of recommendations to Cyprus tailored to improve its capacity to combat corruption. They deal, inter alia, with police specialisation in the use of confiscation and interim measures regarding corruption proceeds, citizen’s access to information held by public authorities, the mandate of the Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman), conflicts of interest in situations where public officials move to the private sector and sanctions applicable to legal persons convicted of corruption offences.

Measures taken by Cyprus to implement the recommendations will be assessed by GRECO in the context of a specific compliance procedure, towards the beginning of 2008.

See Report