ECUADOR

On November 17, Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, held a protocol meeting with the Latin American Financial Action Task Force (GAFILAT in Spanish) and the national Financial and Economic Analysis Unit (UAFE in Spanish). The purpose of the meeting was to analyze Ecuador’s Mutual Evaluation process, which consists of a review of the country’s systems and mechanisms created to prevent and combat money laundering and terrorist financing. GAFILAT is expected to present a report in December 2022.

On the occasion, the general director of the UAFE and vice-president of GAFILAT, Carla Mera Proaño, said that the evaluators of the financial group will verify the effectiveness of the national Money Laundering Prevention System by the end of 2022, conducting a “rigorous” analysis of all state institutions to corroborate that they do not incur in money laundering activities.

In turn, Ricardo Liao, president of GAFILAT, indicated that during the visit several technical and administrative meetings were held with members of the Ecuadorian Money Laundering Prevention System so that the experts of the entity he presides could analyze the most relevant points in terms of policies, rules and regulations related to this issue. From this, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Simon Cuevas, stated that “Ecuador has among its priorities the fight against corruption” and therefore received favorably the international technical assistance to evaluate in the public and private spheres the compliance of regulations in terms of fiscal anti-corruption.

It should be noted that the meeting was held within the framework of the agenda that GAFILAT authorities are fulfilling in Ecuador as part of the Mutual Evaluation process that will end in 2022. Thus, the evaluation includes a four-stage process: the high-level visit of the GAFILAT Secretariat, the on-site visit of the evaluators, the review of the report and finally the approval of the final report in the plenary of the international organization.