Financial Times | GPE – July 25, 2017:
Brussels sends letters to 17 countries about missing deadline to launch company register.
Brussels has rebuked national governments in the EU for failing to apply rules aimed at making it harder for terror organisations and criminal gangs to hide their money by shifting it around European countries.
Vera Jourova, the EU justice commissioner, told the Financial Times that as many as 17 EU countries may have failed to put the rules in place on time, despite them having more than two years to do so. The measures require countries to set up national registers showing the ultimate “beneficial owners” of companies, which can then be accessed by authorities throughout the EU.
Europol and other EU law enforcement agencies have said that the plans would make it harder for people to hide assets behind complex corporate structures, and simpler for authorities to work together to track suspicious cross-border transactions. They also set tougher due-diligence requirements for banks, lawyers and accountants.
Ms Jourova said she had sent letters to 14 countries last week over concerns that they have failed to put the rules on their national statute books at all. She also sent letters to another three countries where the measures appear to have been only partly implemented.
The rules, known as the “fourth anti-money laundering directive”, were supposed to take full effect across the EU on June 26.
The only EU nations to provide full confirmation to Brussels that the measures were implemented on time were the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Croatia.
Ms Jourova said the performance was unacceptable at a time when the EU has made the fight against illegal finance one of its top priorities in the wake of a spate of terror attacks.
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