Malta was voted off the Financial Action Task Force grey list on Wednesday, one year after first being labelled an untrustworthy financial jurisdiction by the global watchdog.

The FATF vote is secret and a formal announcement of that decision will only be made at the end of its plenary, on Friday afternoon. However, Times of Malta has confirmed that Malta’s financial regime was given the all-clear in a high-level plenary vote at around 5pm in Berlin.

Being placed on the grey list meant the country was put under increased scrutiny by international assessors and bodies.

The decision to take Malta off the list comes four months after the FATF publicly announced that initial indications showed that Malta had substantially completed the necessary reforms and appeared to have addressed the shortcomings identified.