The President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Albania, Enio Jaço has reacted today after the publication of the report of Moneyval, the unit of the European Commission for the assessment of money laundering risk.

In a post on social networks, Jaço added that the fact that Moneyval demands that Albania be monitored because there is no improvement in the fight against money laundering shows a lot about the unreliability of Albania's policies and the negligible progress.

"Two years ago, Albania was included in the gray list of money laundering and today, two years later, we have zero progress.

"Unfortunately, this lack of responsibility to perform some basic homework, damages not only the credibility of Albania, but also the progress in the EU", stressed the head of AmCham.

He has said that the phenomenon of money laundering is not isolated.

According to the President of AmCham, money laundering is a ramification related to the equally acute problems that Albania has, corruption, abusive practices, monopolies and the list goes on.

"And as long as all these challenges are not fought together and are not replaced by European standards, there may be no surprises of progress in the years to come," Jaço added.

The next monitoring report for Albania concluded that our country has not significantly improved its measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in accordance with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The annual report states that Albania is on the gray list and should be kept under constant monitoring.

"Among other issues, the report examined new international standards applied to virtual assets, including cryptocurrencies and providers of these assets.

"Moneyval decided that Albania should remain expanded monitoring and report further on further progress to strengthen the implementation of money laundering and counter-terrorism measures on an annual basis," the report reads.