Brussels plans new money-laundering crackdown

Brussels has redoubled efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing with proposals to give the European Banking Authority (EBA) a powerful new mandate to impose sanctions directly on the banks of member states.

A series of measures that would make Europe’s banking supervisor the ultimate arbiter in the most serious cross-border money-laundering cases were announced to coincide with the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s annual state of the union speech on Wednesday.

Europe is under pressure to respond following a series of recent scandals including the collapse of ABLV Bank in Latvia and the freezing of assets at Pilatus Bank in Malta following allegations of sanctions busting by its Iranian owner.

Investigations such as the Panama Papers and the Global Laundromat series, which revealed the movement of $21bn (£16bn) in dirty funds from Russia, have underlined how poor supervision by member states and a lack of cross-border cooperation between law enforcement agencies is allowing money to flow from countries with high levels of corruption into Europe.

“Anti-money laundering supervision has failed all too often in the EU,” said Valdis Dombrovskis, vice-president for financial services policy at the commission. He said enhancing the powers of the EBA would ensure “different supervisors cooperate and exchange information and that anti-money laundering rules are enforced effectively across EU countries”.


The EBA would be able to order national regulators to investigate breaches and specify remedies such as sanctions. If national regulators failed to act, the commission explained in a memo on Wednesday, the EBA would have the power to step in “to address decisions directly” to banks.

The EBA’s head office is in London, but it will relocate to Paris after Britain leaves the EU in March.



“Several recent cases of money laundering in European banks have given rise to concerns that gaps remain in the union’s supervisory framework,” the commission said in its briefing.

It also highlighted “delayed supervisory reactions and shortcomings with respect to cooperation and information sharing” both at domestic level, between prudential and anti-money laundering authorities, and across borders between authorities in different member states or countries outside of Europe.


The Guardian | September 13, 2018