Bosnia and Herzegovina faces possible Moneyval gray‑list placement over missing owners register

The Council of Europe's Moneyval monitoring body is expected to decide on Friday whether to place Bosnia and Herzegovina on its gray list for insufficient oversight of money‑laundering and terrorist‑financing controls. The decision follows the country's failure to adopt a beneficial‑ownership register for legal entities, a key requirement for removal from the list. Inclusion would trigger additional checks on cross‑border payments, raise transaction costs and pose reputational risks for investors.

Bosnian Justice Minister Vedran Škobić has blamed the unfinished International Finance Corporation (IFC) project, part of the World Bank, for the lack of a functional registry, stating that "the shortcomings of the World Bank project put us in this undesirable situation." The IFC, however, repudiated any link, noting that its LIFE programme from 2016‑2023 focused on digitising business registration and did not cover a beneficial‑ownership registry. Bosnia was previously on Moneyval's gray list from 2015 to 2018.