FATF removes Bulgaria, Monaco, Côte d'Ivoire and the DRC from the grey list; Vietnam stays

On 30 October 2026 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) concluded its first plenary under the UK presidency. According to press reports of the outcome, four jurisdictions were removed from the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, usually called the "grey list": Bulgaria, Monaco, Côte d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. None was added. The outcome matters to any bank, administrator or group whose onboarding and counterparty policies refer to the grey list.

What the rules say

The FATF keeps two public lists, and they do different things. High-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action are those for which counter-measures or enhanced due diligence are called for. Jurisdictions under increased monitoring have committed to resolve strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes within agreed timeframes, and the FATF monitors them while they do so.

Press coverage of this plenary reported the call-for-action list as unchanged, naming Iran and Myanmar, and the FATF reinforced its warning on Myanmar. Vietnam stays on the grey list. Press reports say the FATF expressed concern about the pace of its progress and will consider next steps if tangible improvements are not made before the next plenary.

Who is affected

The United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Singapore are on neither list. For groups based there, the effect arrives through counterparties, payment routes and clients connected to listed places, because banks often apply FATF status to the country of the customer, of the beneficial owner and of the payment counterparty.

What it means in practice

Take a hypothetical Mauritius holding company that receives dividends from a subsidiary in Monaco or Bulgaria. Its bank may have applied enhanced due diligence to those flows while the country was listed. Removal gives the bank grounds to relax that treatment, but banks update their internal country-risk lists on their own timetable, so the change is likely to arrive in stages and not on the date of the plenary.

What we do not yet know

We could not open the FATF's own October 2026 pages when this item was prepared, so the account above rests on consistent press and compliance-industry reports of the outcome. Anyone changing a policy should read the FATF's published statements first. Effective dates for the removals have not been confirmed, and nor has the way individual banks will treat them.