Money laundering, Albania amid countries with the highest risk.

Albania appears to be among countries with the highest risk for money laundering. Such fact is confirmed by the latest data published by the Basel Institute of Governance, which works with the public and private sector to counter corruption. According to the Basel Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Index 2017, Albania is in the top of high-risk risk countries in Europe and Central Asia. The index, a study by a Swiss group, ranked 146 countries based on the risk level in money laundering and terrorist financing, and based on public sources and third-party assessments. Based on this publication, Albania ranks 85th with 5.75 points, deteriorating compared to a year ago, when this index was 5.04. Within Europe only Serbia and Bosnia perform worse. Although the figures show deterioration in the index, there’s an improvement in the ranking. In 2016, the country ranked 102nd, while this year, the country has seen an improvement of 17 places. Meanwhile, the 10 countries with the highest risk for money laundering are Iran, Afghanistan, Guinea, Tajikistan, Laos, Mozambique, Mali, Uganda, Cambodia and Tanzania in terms of money laundering and "terrorist". The countries with the lowest risk for money laundering are Finland, Lithuania and Estonia. The Basel Index measures the risk of money laundering ad funding of terrorism, based on 14 indicators, for the sixth year since it was started. Albania has registered deterioration in the index. The index measures money laundering and financing of terrorism, starting with the lowest risk (with 0 points) to the highest risk (with 10 points). According to the report of Basel (AML), Index measures the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing of countries based on publicly available sources. "As there are no quantitative data available, the Basel AML Index does not measure the actual existence of money laundering activity or amount of illicit financial money within a country but is designed to indicate the risk level, i.e. the vulnerabilities of money laundering and terrorist financing within a country", explained in the report.