APS : Sunday, 09 June 2019
ALGIERS- Algeria can henceforth access financial markets as an agreement has recently been signed between the COSOB and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO),
the commission’s chairman, Abdelhakim Berrah, said Sunday.
“Algeria had been on the grey list of countries that do not cooperate with the IOSCO. As a result, it could not access foreign capital markets,” Berrah said in an interview with APS.
“Now it has signed the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU), it has joined the international group of countries cooperating against money laundering through financial markets and cross-border breaches of stock-exchange regulations.”
Algeria has nothing to hide in terms of financial information, even before the signing of MMoU, but its legal framework did not allow it to exchange such information with the rest of the world.
Algeria’s Finance Act 2018 has made it possible for the Commission of Organization and Monitoring of Stock Exchange Transactions (COSOB) to exchange such information with the 122 other signatories of the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding.
Under the MMoU, “if a member of the agreement opens an investigation about an operator suspected of fraud, it may request from the regulatory bodies in the MMoU signatory countries, that is all countries except those in war such as Yemen, Iraq and Libya, to provide it with information on the suspect,” Berrah said.
