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#newsThe main changes are:
- Halving the reporting threshold from 15k EUR to 7.5k EUR
- Regulating all gambling instead of just casinos.
- The concept of "politically exposed person" now includes same-country PEPs as well as foreign PEPs.
- Inclusion of tax crimes
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).
