For the first time, the world's anti-money-laundering standard-setter has published a series of charts that show the compliance (or otherwise) of countries that are struggling to obey its rules.

One series of columns contains ratings that show the extent to which a country's measures are, the FATF's eyes, effective. The assessment is conducted on the basis of 11 "immediate outcomes," as the FATF calls them, which represent the main goals that an effective AML/CFT system should achieve. Next to them are columnsthat show the extent to which this-or-that country has obeyed the technical requirements of the FATF's recommendations. The entire series of tables is available at http://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/mutualevaluations/documents/assessment-ratings.html

Some surprising countries display a high amount of effectiveness, whereby the "immediate outcome is achieved to a very large extent [with] minor improvements needed." The only countries that score this highly in category 102 ("international co-operation delivers appropriate information, financial intelligence, and evidence, and facilitates action against criminals and their assets") are Sweden and Australia. Only Spain scores this highly in category 106 ("financial intelligence and all other relevant information are appropriately used by competent authorities for money-laundering and terrorist-financing investigations"). Some categories have no high-scoring countries in them at all.

The country that has the most 'HE' or high-effectiveness points, perhaps surprisingly, is the United States. Although the country's secretive corporate sector is the scandal of the AML world, it excels in anything to do with the projection of cross-border state power. The US tops categories 108-11, which proclaim that the proceeds and 'instrumentalities' of crime are confiscated; that terrorist financing offences and activities are investigated and people who finance terrorism are prosecuted and subject to effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions; that terrorist financiers are prevented from raising, moving and using funds, and from abusing charities; and that people and entities involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are prevented from raising, moving and using funds in a way that is consistent with the relevant edicts from the United Nations.

Then there are columns that show countries' compliance with each one of the FATF's so-called 40 recommendations. These are the famous findings of non-compliance (NC), partial compliance (PC) and compliance (C) that appear in the FATF's misleadingly-named "mutual evaluations," so-called because one FATF member-state used to be called on to evaluate another before the FATF dragooned them all into paying for its own investigative teams.

The two outstanding compliance columns of this kind pertain to recommendation 9 (financial institution secrecy laws) and recommendation 30 (resonsibilities of law enforcement and investigative authorities). The overwhelming majority of countries bear the green 'C for compliance' stamp here. Recommendations 20 and 21 (reporting of suspicious transactions and tipping off/confidentiality) also have a heavily compliant majority.