The German Bar Association criticised the proposed Third Money-Laundering Directive for imposing unjustified obligations on the legal profession. The organisation is especially worried about the proposal's erosion of the lawyer-client confidentiality principle.
Spokeswoman Eva Schriever told Europe Information on January 7: “the draft Directive is not suitable for a lawyer-client relationship - it is not the lawyers' job to vet their clients before entering a formal relationship”. She added that “the second Directive at least gave us a compromise on reporting requirements but this one amplifies our obligations”.
Ms Schriever says the proposal is also legally flawed as it uses the same instrument to deal with “two things that are in fact the opposite: money laundering and financing of terrorism”. Money-laundering involves channelling illegally-earned profits into legitimate projects, while terrorism-financing often involves using clean money to fund an illegal activity.
Equally worrying for her is the proposal's broad scope, which she says will impose reporting requirements even where the amounts of money involved are very small. Finally, she slammed the European Commission for tabling the proposal before assessing the Second Directive (2001/97/EC)'s impact, noting cases are pending in Poland and Belgium that claim the Directive infringes human rights law.
Position paper (German)
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