After ranking thirteenth on a World Bank list of 190 economies in terms of policies designed to facilitate the conduct of business, Mauritius has just been awarded a very good score in a sensitive area where maintaining its reputation played on a tightrope. Indeed, its latest score for its policy, its capacity, its will and its predisposition to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism indicates that the country has satisfied 35 of the 40 recommendations, therefore a performance of 88%. For the five others, its performance oscillates between non-compliance and partial compliance. These recommendations were issued by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental benchmark watchdog. Its main mission is to establish international standards, to develop and promote national and international policies to combat money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In other words, Mauritius is globally recognized as a clean destination where foreign capital can be hosted to develop new business projects or to consolidate ongoing business. In short, a world-class business environment whose practices comply with international standards in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. This result frees the Mauritian financial services from the stress caused by an evaluation, in September 2018, which placed Mauritius on the list of bad students of the FATF and the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAALG). The latter is the regional body responsible for implementing the recommendations of the former. Mauritius was out of step with 26 FATF recommendations. Dhanunjaye Gaoneadry, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Financial Services and Good Governance, calls this performance a major achievement, in a letter to Dev Manraj, Financial Secretary, who chairs the national committee in charge of bringing Mauritius up to FATF standards. "This performance was made possible thanks to the level of leadership you have shown and your unfailing involvement at the highest level during a record period of one year." The Permanent Secretary points out that Mauritius' performance has been praised by FATF and ESAALG officials. But he says he has no illusions because much remains to be done to prevent Mauritius from being absent from the list of the Monitoring Group on International Cooperation, an offshoot of the FATF, which is the bane of countries engaged in services. international financiers. A team of women He believes that the work of the ministry's team of legal advisers was decisive in this performance. Extremely rare, it was an essentially female team, namely, Yotsna Lalji-Venkatasawmy, from the ministry, Sulakshna Gigabhoy Sauhoboa, prosecutor at the Attorney General's Office, Anushka Pochun from the Financial Intelligence Unit, Yonesha Sahye from the Financial Services Commission and of Rajshri Jutton Gopy of the Bank of Mauritius. The announcement of this very favorable and crucial performance for financial services almost coincides with the publication, on October 24, by the Bank of Mauritius, of the preliminary results of the overall inflow of foreign direct investment for the first half of 2019. This plan too, the success of Mauritius is more than honorable, compared to that of the same period in 2018. Foreign direct investment recorded a jump of 21% from Rs 8.8 billion in 2018 to Rs 10.7 billion in 2019. Difficult for the other segments of the sector to dislodge real estate from first place. Its performance more than doubled from Rs 4.7 billion in 2018 to Rs 9.6 billion in 2019, a difference of 105.3%. On the other hand, after a remarkable performance in 2018 valued at Rs 4 billion, activities related to finance and insurance only attracted Rs 189 million in direct investment from abroad at the end of the first half of 2019. of 2018 results from the rush by non-residents to acquire large local companies (management companies) operating in financial services and whose role consists above all in managing the activities of entities such as mutual funds or even investment companies.