Saudi Arabia has reportedly been included in an EU draft list of countries that pose a threat to the bloc due to their lax control on money laundering and terrorism financing.
An EU source and a Saudi source on Friday that the European Commission had added Riyadh to its blacklist, which already includes 16 states based on criteria used by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based anti money-laundering watchdog.
The EU claims that the countries blacklisted “have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism regimes that pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union.”