LONDON: The European Union will propose a new agent to take action on money laundering and new transparency rules for the transfer of crypto assets, UE documents show on Wednesday as blocks respond to calls for harder action to fight money.
Europe has been pressure to increase the enforcement of anti-money laundering rules after several countries began to investigate Danske Bank more than 200 billion Euro suspicious transactions that passed Estonian small branches between 2007 and 2015.
Lack of PAN-EU authorities to stop money, Brussels has relied on national regulators Enforcing the rules, but they don’t always work completely.
“Money laundering, terrorist financing and organized crime remains a significant problem that must be handled at the Union level,” said the documents seen by Reuters.
The European Executive EU Commission proposes the new Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) which will be the “centerpiece” of the integrated surveillance system also consisting of national authorities, the document said.
“By supervising and making a direct decision on several of the most risky cross-border sectors that are obliged to entities, authorities will contribute directly to prevent money laundering / terrorist financing incidents in the trade union,” added the document.
“At the same time, it will coordinate the National Supervisory Authority and help them increase their effectiveness in upholding a single regulatory book and ensuring homogeneous and high-quality supervision standards, risk assessment approaches and methodologies.” The UE AML rules will be made directly binding member countries to stop criminals that exploit the differences between the national regulator, the document said.
Further proposals will introduce new EU requirements for service providers in Crypto assets to collect and create data that can be accessed regarding the originator and beneficiary of the transfer in the assets.
The transfer of the virtual asset is currently outside the scope of the EU rules for financial services.
“The lack of such rules makes Crypto assets holders exposed to money laundering and risk financing of terrorism, because the forbidden flow can be done through the transfer of Crypto assets,” the document said.
Sven Giegold, a member of the German Green Party from the European Parliament, said the European Commission had collected a strong package against money laundering.
Parliament and EU countries will have a final decision on the proposed rules.
“With uniform standards and more centralized supervision, the EU Commission introduces important improvements to enable consistent actions to financial crimes,” Giegold said.
The EU must temporarily pursue legal action against EU countries that do not enforce AML rules correctly, he added.