EU Adds Algeria to List of High-Risk Countries for Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing
Rabat – The European Commission has amended a list of high-risk jurisdictions, adding Algeria to the list of a group of high-risk third countries identified as having strategic deficiencies in their systems for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The commission announced the new update on June 10, noting that the inclusion takes into account the risk assessment by the Financial Task Force (FATFS).
The document from the European Commission shows that Algeria was added to the FATFS in October of last year, after the country failed to meet international standards.
Algeria's inclusion on the high-risk list could be a clear and explicit signal by the European Commission's position against Algeria's regime support and financing of the Polisario Front.
This comes as many international observers, MPs, and politicians increasingly call on the international community to designate the separatist group as a terrorist organization.
The Polisario Front receives billions of dollars from the Algerian regime, which uses the separatist group as a political tool to exert its agenda of challenging Morocco's territorial integrity over its southern provinces.
Under Algeria's support, the Polisario Front has also been embezzling humanitarian aid and financial assistance directed to Sahrawis who are suffering from dire malnutrition and drought within the Tindouf camps.
Algeria's addition to the high-risk list also comes amid a growing wave of international support for Morocco's territorial integrity and sovereignty over its southern provinces in Western Sahara.
Over 113 countries now support the Moroccan Autonomy Plan, recognizing it as the most serious and credible political framework for resolving the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria's inclusion on the grey list also came a few weeks when the EU categorically repudiated the self-styled 'SADR' – the Polisario Front leadership that is fully backed by Algeria.
'Neither the EU nor any of its Member States recognize the SADR,' the EU spokesperson for foreign affairs said in May in the wake of an Algeria-sponsored allegation in support of separatism claims to challenge Morocco's territorial integrity.
This came after Polisario members traveled to Brussels to take part in an EU-African Union ministerial meeting at the invitation of the AU.
'The position of the EU is well known, and that the illusory entity's presence at the EU-AU ministerial meeting has no influence whatsoever on this position,' the spokesperson said, sending a new devastating diplomatic setback for the Polisario separatist agenda sponsored by the Algerian regime.
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