Title: New proposed EU AML standards Post by: Mike Hearn on February 05, 2013, 04:35:47 PM It's that time again .... AML laws getting tougher (in the EU). These haven't been passed into law yet, but I doubt there'll be much pushback from the EU Parliament.
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/company/financial-crime/index_en.htm#news The main changes are:
and about a million little tweaks of minor consequence. The biggest pain for ordinary people will be the drop in the reporting threshold, and the expansion of the PEP system. For those who haven't encountered it yet, a PEP is somebody who is thought to be at higher risk of corruption, like judges, politicians, senior police officers, their relatives, etc. I say "etc" because the definition is absurdly vague with the result that millions of people can be considered PEPs. Upon opening an account for such a person you are supposed to do "enhanced due diligence", but the definition of that is also vague. The blacklists aren't built by the government, but instead by private sector firms that compete on how many people they blacklist so good luck getting yourself unlisted if someone decides you are a corruption risk. The press releases and contents of the linked documents are exactly what you'd expect if you've spent any time reading the output of regulators. If you want a laugh try reading the section where they try to quantify the amount of laundering and the amount that actually gets caught (and the cost of terrorist operations). Title: Re: New proposed EU AML standards Post by: The Fool on February 05, 2013, 05:16:45 PM The blacklists aren't built by the government, but instead by private sector firms that compete on how many people they blacklist so good luck getting yourself unlisted if someone decides you are a corruption risk. This is all too convenient for elites who want to engage in corruption. All you have to do is have connections with the firms and have the lists made to your will. Anti-corruption? More like corruption by endorsement only. Title: Re: New proposed EU AML standards Post by: HowGudAmI on February 06, 2013, 10:18:31 AM
This one Is quite the drop, and will cause hassle to a lot of people that are earning a pretty small amount of money! Also, how would this affect the UK (seen as we use GBP), if at all? Title: Re: New proposed EU AML standards Post by: Mike Hearn on February 06, 2013, 10:43:12 AM The new rules aren't finalized yet. One they are they'll be implemented throughout the EEA, so it'll be the case in the UK too. I'm presume the UK would also just halve its current thresholds.
All this stuff basically just ripples out from the FATF with regulators in different countries competing on how aggressively they can implement AML principles in their own laws. |