On 22 February 2022, the Mauritian Ministry of Financial Services and Good Governance issued a communique reporting the country’s removal from the European Union (‘EU’) List of High-Risk Third Countries. This list is also called the Anti-money Laundering and Countering Terrorist Financing List (‘AML/CTF’);1 or, less affectionately, the Blacklist. Mauritius issued this report a month after the European Union released its Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/229,2 removing Botswana and Mauritius from the AML/CTF.

The EU placed Mauritius and Botswana on the Blacklist in May 20203 after adopting updated criteria for assessing high-risk third countries4 and publishing its revised methodology for identifying these high-risk jurisdictions.5 These updated criteria and procedures relegated the tax regimes of Mauritius and Botswana as strategically ‘[deficient] on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing…,’ such that they ‘pose significant threats to the financial system of the Union.’6 Placement on the Blacklist encumbers States with increased monitoring, regulatory requirements, and global trade restrictions that can result in a heavy economic toll. Moreover, to exit the list, countries must remediate deficiencies in cooperation with the EU and Financial Action Task Force (‘FATF’), each of which must be satisfied with the improvements made.

Mauritius and Botswana passed a bevy of substantial laws in just over a year to satisfy the EU and FATF, earning an exit from the Blacklist. Among the many changes, enhancements to each country’s transparency measures were central. Adopting new approaches to beneficial ownership and residence in each country is at the core of this transparency.

This work will explore how Mauritius and Botswana leveraged new approaches to beneficial ownership and residence to meet EU standards for tax regime transparency, resulting in each country’s removal from the EU Blacklist. This analysis will begin with an economic overview of Mauritius and Botswana. What follows will be an introduction to the EU AML/CTF list, followed by how and why the EU placed Mauritius and Botswana on the list. Finally, this work will look at how Mauritius and Botswana exited the list, and what that exit means for each country and other countries like them.

Day one of pilot training (Undergraduate Pilot Training or UPT as we called it in the Air Force) held many formative, memorable, and entertaining moments for me. I looked around at engineers, airline pilots, and former fighter navigators and realized for the first time I was not the only one ‘born for this’.

We all spend hours on our resumes trying to convince an HR department or admissions committee that the only mistake we’ve made is not applying sooner! That we’ve only learned through the sweet taste of victory, and excellence is our default state of being. Go us! However, the truth about my highlights is that each of them punctuates some failure or shortcoming that occurred somewhere between the lines.

The future is serious business, but so are immediate actions and self-care. Sometimes we can get so lost looking at all the fig branches, that we forget that the most important parts of the tree are beneath us; the roots and the soil they rest in.