EU agency to target money-laundering finance firms

EU POLICYMAKERS yesterday proposed a new agency to stop financial firms from aiding criminals and terrorists.

The move comes after a scandal at a Danish bank highlighted the inadequacy of the bloc’s defences.

Europe came under pressure to step up enforcement of its anti-money laundering rules when several countries began investigating Danske Bank after more than €200billion of suspicious transactions passed through its tiny Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.

With no EU authority to stop money laundering and terrorist financing running into billions of euros, Brussels has relied on national regulators, but they have disagreed over who should be in charge and not always enforced rules consistently.

‘The national turf we need to protect is the European Union,’ EU financial services chief Mairead McGuinness said. ‘This package will correct those gaps.’

The EU Commission proposed creating an EU Anti-Money Laundering/Countering Financing of Terrorism Authority to directly supervise a yet-to-be-compiled list of crossborder financial firms considered the most risky, and to coordinate enforcement among national regulators.

A levy on the risky firms will largely fund the new body, which should be fully up and running by 2026 with about 250 staff, including 100 to supervise the riskiest firms jointly with national regulators.

AMLA, which will cost €45.6million to run and have powers to impose sanctions of up to €10million or 10% of a firm’s annual turnover, would strip the EU’s European Banking Authority of the role it has had since 2019 of coordinating enforcement of antimoney laundering rules.