Money laundering agency mooted

– The European Union (EU) should set up a new agency to counter money laundering after a series of high-profile cases bared weaknesses in the system, an influential thinktank said in a report.

Lenders in Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and Cyprus have recently been embroiled in money laundering scandals, with criminal schemes often executed through foreign branches within the EU.

EU regulators have discussed limited changes to the bloc’s legal framework, but proposals to slightly increase the monitoring powers of the European Banking Authority face opposition in some member states.

The reform should go much further, experts at Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel said on Thursday. “It is evident that recent anti-money laundering supervision in the EU has been embarrassingly ineffective,” Joshua Kirschenbaum and Nicolas Veron wrote in the Bruegel paper.

EU diplomats are preparing an action plan on money laundering by the end of the year. –