iGen Chairman says unprecedented ‘national unity’ can be seen to get Malta off FATF greylist

Founder and Chairperson of iGen (iGaming European Network), Enrico Bradamante says the length of time Malta spends on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) greylist will directly impact the negative effects on the country’s iGaming sector.

Speaking during a podcast with iGaming Next’s Head of Insight and Intelligence, Rory Credland, Mr Bradamante shares his views on the areas Malta needs to improve in to be placed back onto the whitelist.

“If we go back, there were 58 non-compliant points that Malta needed to address in 2019 after the MoneyVal report, and now we’re left with three which are enforcement related,” he asserts, adding that these three technical points need to be addressed individually by Government and the respective responsible bodies.

“How quickly will this be done? It is hard to say. There is certainly huge momentum I would say and maybe something that I haven’t seen in the nine years that I have been a Malta, kind of a national unity on really getting the whole country back onto a whitelisting status. So, my hope is that this happens as quickly as possible,” says Mr Bradamante.

Referencing a case study that could be compared to Malta’s current predicament, the Chairman says that Iceland experienced a similar fate in recent years, which saw the country greylisted for 12 months.

“If we’re going to be measuring this time with months, let’s say up to 12 months, I think this would be good. If we’re talking about two to five years, that strikes me as a very long time to be in a greylisted status, and that will have consequences on [iGaming] companies’ decision to stay on,” he said, as industry professionals would be likely not want to be based in a greylisted jurisdiction.

As the situation develops, Mr Bradamante says that iGEN will continue to be close to the Government.

“Government has been transparent to a degree, and we would like to see greater transparency on the progress that these individual task forces will need to do, on the actions they will need to take in order to reach a pass mark,” he says, concluding that if this drags on for years, “the more negative the effects will be for Malta”.