FATF inspectors are in Damascus for the first on-site review since 2010
The one step that has blocked Syria’s exit from the financial grey list for sixteen years is finally under way — and exit is still not automatic.
Experts from the Financial Action Task Force have begun a field visit to Syria to review implementation of its action plan on money laundering and terrorist financing, The Syrian Observer reported on 2 October, sourcing the account to AL-HAL. It is the first inspection of its kind since Syria was placed on the FATF grey list in February 2010. The structural point matters more than the visit itself: the FATF has for years held that Syria completed the agreed action plan at the technical level, but that the security situation prevented an on-site visit to verify the reforms had begun and could be sustained. The on-site visit has always been the single blocking step. The report rests on one sourcing chain in English and has not yet been matched by an FATF publication or a central bank statement.
Delisting would arrive into an already-shifting financial picture. The United States has formally removed Syria from its state sponsors of terrorism list, with banking, technology and telecoms expected to benefit most through improved SWIFT access and Western equipment imports, The National reported on 25 August; DP World has committed $800 million to upgrading the port at Tartus. An IMF staff visit concluded on 3 August named new central bank and banking laws and a thorough assessment of banks' financial health as immediate priorities, and tied AML/CFT work explicitly to “Syria’s removal from FATF’s grey list.” Finance Minister Yisr Barnieh told The National a year ago, on 15 October 2025, that “we will be out of the grey list very soon,” and that his ministry was in contact with the US Treasury “every week.”
Assessment: The honest frame is that this is a procedural milestone, not a verdict. Inspectors arriving is the precondition for exit, not evidence of it, and the record of ministerial optimism — Barnieh’s “very soon,” now twelve months old — is the reason to wait for the FATF’s own plenary language rather than the arrival announcement. Nor does delisting clear the field: the Wilson Center notes Syria remains on the UK’s High-Risk Third Countries list and the European Commission’s equivalent, and the State Department’s 2025 narcotics report still calls it a major money laundering jurisdiction. Four other MENAFATF members are grey-listed; Tellimer’s Hasnain Malik reads the status as a deterrent, not a deal-breaker. Capital waiting on Tartus is waiting on correspondent banking, which is a separate decision taken in New York and London.