Four countries off the list on October 30, 2026
Which countries does the task force watch most closely this month? At the close of its plenary on October 30, 2026, the FATF removed Bulgaria, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Monaco from its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, the so-called gray list, according to a FinCEN notice published the same day.
The shorter list, high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action, kept its three names. Iran and North Korea face calls for countermeasures. Burma (Myanmar) gets closer due diligence only. For Iran the countermeasures name crypto firms directly, asking countries to limit virtual asset transactions on a risk basis and to stop financial institutions and VASPs from opening new correspondent relationships there.
Before that meeting, HM Treasury’s advisory notice of June 22, 2026 counted 22 countries on the gray list. FinCEN’s summary of the October plenary names four removals and no additions.
Who sits at the table
The same Treasury notice describes the FATF as a body created by the G7 in 1989 whose members today are 38 jurisdictions and two regional organizations, the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council. It sets the standards and then monitors them, and its lists change on the last day of plenaries held every February, June and October.
Crypto entered the rulebook in 2018, when the FATF revised its standards to apply the same kind of rules to virtual assets and their service providers as to other financial firms, the US Treasury says in a 2023 risk assessment.
One of those rules is Recommendation 16, under which basic details of the sender and the recipient go along with a wire transfer, as a 2020 Federal Register notice explains. Exchanges know its crypto version as the Travel Rule.
Countries were slow to follow. Of 53 jurisdictions the FATF had assessed by June 2022, 33 were rated partially compliant with the crypto standards and 8 non-compliant, according to the same Treasury paper.
How the US, the EU and the UK use the lists
Each of the three gives the lists a different weight. The UK writes them straight into its regulations, the EU keeps a list of its own, and US financial institutions are told to weigh them inside their own risk policies.
| Jurisdiction | What a listing changes |
|---|---|
| US | FinCEN reminds covered institutions of the due diligence rule for foreign correspondent accounts, 31 CFR 1010.610(a), and warns that it should not become grounds for “wholesale or indiscriminate de-risking” |
| EU | The Commission keeps its own list under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1675, last amended by Regulations 2026/46 and 2026/83, and firms apply the stricter checks of Article 18a of the anti-money laundering directive |
| UK | Since June 30, 2026, regulation 33 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 requires automatic extra due diligence only for call-for-action countries, and the gray list becomes one risk factor among others |
The UK change came from the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026, laid before Parliament on March 25, 2026, the Treasury notice says. Firms there must still treat FATF evaluations of a country as a geographic risk factor.
One list, three lists, or none
The first mistake is to treat every list as the same list. They differ. The Commission’s table of high-risk countries holds 26 names. On November 10, 2026 it still showed Monaco and Côte d’Ivoire, listed since August 5, 2025, and it has included Russia since January 29, 2026, though Russia appeared on neither FATF list in the June notice.
Another mistake is to read a FATF listing as a sanction. It is a call for closer checks, while freezing assets is a separate legal step taken by bodies such as OFAC in the US. The June notice flagged 9 of its 25 listed countries as also under UK financial sanctions, among them Haiti, Syria and Yemen.
Moving money to or from a listed country? Expect more questions from the exchange, and check which list your provider’s regulator actually follows.