On Tuesday, MEPs from the Economic and Monetary Affairs and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs committees adopted their position on three pieces of draft legislation on the financing provisions of EU Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) policy. The package consists of:
- the EU “single rulebook” - regulation - with provisions on conducting due diligence on customers, transparency of beneficial owners and the use of anonymous instruments, such as crypto-assets, and new entities, such as crowdfunding platforms. It also includes provisions on so-called "golden” passports and visas. The text was adopted with 99 votes to 8 and 6 abstentions.
- The 6th Anti-Money Laundering - directive - containing national provisions on supervision and Financial Intelligence Units, as well as on access for competent authorities to necessary and reliable information, e.g. beneficial ownership registers and assets stored in free zones. The text was adopted with 107 votes to 5 and 0 abstentions.
Read the quotes of the MEPs who will lead the negotiations on the final shape of the bills here.
Prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing
According to the adopted texts, entities, such as banks, assets and crypto assets managers, real and virtual estate agents and high-level professional football clubs, will be required to verify their customers’ identity, what they own and who controls the company. They will also have to establish detailed types of risk of money laundering and terrorist financing in their sector of activity, and transmit the relevant information to a central register.
To restrict transactions in cash and crypto assets, MEPs want to cap payments that can be accepted by persons providing goods or services. They set limits up to €7000 for cash payments and €1000 for crypto-asset transfers, where the customer cannot be identified. Given the manifest risk of misuse by criminals, MEPs want to ban any citizenship by investments schemes (“golden passports”) and impose strong AML controls on residence by investment schemes ("golden visas”)...
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