As published on complianceweek.com , Wednesday 13 May, 2020.
The European Commission has unveiled a new six-point plan to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing.
The “ambitious and multifaceted” action plan published last week sets out concrete measures the Commission will take over the next 12 months to better enforce, supervise, and coordinate the EU’s rules on combating money laundering and terrorist financing while shutting down any remaining loopholes and removing any weak links in the EU’s rules.
The plan rests on six pillars:
The proposals are open to consultation until July 29.
The initiative is a response to the Commission’s anti-money laundering report from July 2019 which highlighted a number of weaknesses in its framework to tackle the flow of dirty money and how that cash was being channeled through Europe’s banking system into the hands of terrorist organizations.
The Commission has also published a new methodology to identify high-risk third countries that have strategic deficiencies in their national anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes, which pose significant threats to the EU’s financial system.
Countries added to the list are the Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Cambodia, Ghana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Panama, and Zimbabwe, while Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Guyana, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia have been delisted.