Nepal Rates National Money Laundering Risk Medium-High in 2026 Assessment

Nepal has published the key findings of its 2026 National Risk Assessment on money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, rating the country’s overall money laundering risk as Medium-High.

The public assessment, released on 9 September by Nepal’s Financial Intelligence Unit under Nepal Rastra Bank, rates the national money laundering threat as High and vulnerability as Medium. Terrorist financing is rated Medium-Low overall, while proliferation financing is rated Low.

The report says Nepal’s AML/CFT legal framework is now broadly sound, but identifies implementation as the main priority. It highlights supervisory delivery, enforcement outcomes, the effective use of financial intelligence and asset recovery as areas where further improvement could have the greatest impact.

High-risk threats span corruption, trade, cyber fraud and virtual assets

The assessment places corruption and bribery, tax-related under- and over-invoicing, smuggling and trade-based money laundering, cooperative fraud, cyber-enabled fraud, hundi, virtual currency use, misuse of legal vehicles and organised financial crime in the High threat category.

Banking remains a common channel at the placement and layering stages and is rated Medium-High as a laundering channel. The assessment says cooperatives account for the largest concentration of value, while real estate is the most frequently used channel at the integration stage.

Digitalisation is also changing the risk environment. The report identifies non-face-to-face onboarding, cyber-enabled fraud, mule accounts, identity fraud, rapid product innovation and the use of virtual asset service providers despite their prohibition as emerging or growing exposures.

Risk assessment is intended to shape institutional controls

The report is not a new AML/CFT law. However, it explicitly states that reporting entities covered by Nepal’s Asset (Money) Laundering Prevention Act should take the findings into account when conducting institutional risk assessments and when designing customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, internal controls and training.

The assessment also points to continued weaknesses around beneficial ownership transparency, misuse of legal persons, cross-border flows, trade-based value transfer and management of seized and confiscated assets. It says asset recovery, particularly the integrated management of seized and confiscated property, represents the single largest opportunity for improvement.

For regulated institutions, the practical significance is that Nepal has now published a formal national risk map that gives clearer priority to cyber-enabled fraud, legal-person misuse, trade-based laundering, cooperative-sector risk and virtual-asset exposure. Supervisors and reporting entities can be expected to increasingly align risk-based controls with those priorities.

Sources

Nepal Rastra Bank / Financial Intelligence Unit — Key Findings: Nepal’s National Risk Assessment on ML/TF/PF 2026
Nepal Department of Money Laundering Investigation — National Risk Assessment publication notice