News CNUE, 13 October 2020
Cross-industry anti-money laundering webinar, 6 October 2020
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The CNUE organised a cross-industry webinar on anti-money laundering on 6 October 2020. This workshop was held in the framework of the 2018-2020 training programme “Europe for Notaries – Notaries for Europe” supported by the European Union.
Around 120 participants took part in the discussions, which were structured around two panels:
– One on “The identification of the beneficial owner in legal persons – challenges and perspectives”.
– The other entitled “What do competent authorities expect from obligated entities? Gaps and ways to improve collaboration”.
Participants included notaries from all over Europe, but also representatives of other professions – accountants, lawyers, judges – , the banking sector, supervisory authorities, Interpol and even the European Commission, in the person of Ms Raluca Prună, Head of the Financial Crime Unit at DG FISMA.
Ms Prună returned to the Action Plan published on 7 May 2020 and the various initiatives that will be undertaken to strengthen the European anti-money laundering framework. In the context of the public consultation organised by the European Commission, Mr Georgios Rouskas, CNUE President, presented in detail the CNUE proposals which can be summarised as follows:
– A future European regulation should take into account the following elements in order to remedy the lack of consistency caused by the divergent transposition of the directives in the Member States:
• the list of covered entities
• the tasks of financial intelligence units
• reporting obligations;
• registers of central bank accounts;
• the ceiling for large cash payments.
– Given the differences between Member States regarding money laundering risks, some elements should be regulated by national law. This would allow Member States to tailor solutions through a risk-based approach adapted to their respective national jurisdictions.
– As notaries are already subject to very strict supervision at national level – usually exercised by judicial authorities – CNUE suggests that this should not be altered by an additional European supervisory authority. A central EU supervisory authority should have direct powers over the financial sector and support Member States by sharing knowledge and experience to improve supervision by national authorities.
The videos of the webinar are available at the following links:
