The Financial Action Task Force has warned that most countries are still failing to recover the profits of crime as Bermuda prepares for its own anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing evaluation.

In Paris, the FATF announced its new Asset Recovery Guidance and Best Practices, calling for countries to “act faster, search further and think bigger” in confiscating illicit wealth.

Elisa de Anda Madrazo, the FATF president, said: “Recovering criminal assets is not an afterthought — it has a real impact on lives around the world and demonstrates that justice systems work.”

According to the FATF, more than 80 per cent of jurisdictions operate at only “low or moderate levels of effectiveness” in asset recovery. Interpol and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have estimated that less than 1 per cent of criminal proceeds are ever confiscated.

The new handbook — spanning eight chapters and more than 85 case examples — highlights the need for faster co-ordination between financial-intelligence units, tax authorities and beneficial-ownership registries. It also urges governments to use technology such as block chain analysis and artificial intelligence to trace assets.

The FATF guidance arrives as Bermuda prepares for its next mutual evaluation by the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, expected in 2026. The last review was completed in 2018.

Bermuda has spent the past year overhauling its beneficial-ownership framework, a key area that FATF identifies as “the cornerstone of asset recovery”.

In September 2025, the Senate passed the Beneficial Ownership Act 2025, moving the central register from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to the Registrar of Companies and creating penalties of up to $250,000 or imprisonment for false declarations.

A follow-up legal column noted that the new regime “consolidates ownership-disclosure rules into one statute” and introduces stronger verification requirements, though “much depends on forthcoming regulations and guidance”.

Government consultation papers released last year said the aim was to enhance Bermuda’s register “in accordance with a revised FATF recommendation” and eventually allow access for persons with a “legitimate interest”.

A July 2025 think-tank report urged Bermuda and other Overseas Territories to “move beyond registration to verification”, warning that weak data quality could undermine upcoming FATF assessments.

Among the 85 case studies in the FATF guidance, one of the most striking involves Switzerland, where authorities confiscated more than CHF 313 million linked to corruption and created a multi-stakeholder fund to benefit the population of the country. The FATF highlighted this as a model for how financial centres can repurpose illicit funds for public benefit.

The report also describes a case in the United States, where block chain analysis helped investigators trace more than $400 million in illicit transactions, leading to compensation for more than 40,000 victims, who recovered 91 per cent of their losses.

The FATF requires jurisdictions to treat asset recovery as “a policy and operational priority” and to maintain systems that can trace, restrain, confiscate and return assets. It emphasises accurate and accessible beneficial-ownership data as a foundation for those efforts.

For Bermuda, assessors have said they would look at how the new beneficial-ownership regime works in practice, how quickly agencies can respond to foreign requests, and whether there is published data on assets seized or returned under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

“Depriving criminals of their gains is as important as prosecuting them,” the FATF said. “Removing the financial motivation for crime is critical to disrupting and deterring criminal organisations, terrorists and scammers around the world.”