European Commission proposes European Banking Authority to enforce against firms for AML / CTF breaches
On 13 September 2018, the European Commission proposed to strengthen the supervision of European Union financial institutions to better address money-laundering and terrorist financing threats.
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The European Commission states that while the European Union has strong AML / CTF rules in place, recent cases with relation to some European Union banks still shows that application of those rules are not always supervised and enforced effectively across the European Union. In response to this the European Commission proposed to amend the Regulation establishing the European Banking Authority to reinforce its role in anti-money laundering supervision of the financial sector.
The amended regulation will:
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enable the European Banking Authority able to request national anti-money laundering supervisors to investigate potential material breaches and to request them to consider targeted actions - such as sanctions;
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provide that the national anti-money laundering supervisors comply with European Union rules and cooperate properly with prudential supervisors. The European Banking Authority's existing powers will be reinforced so that, as a last resort if national authorities do not act, the European Banking Authority will be able to address decisions directly to individual financial sector operators;
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enhance the quality of supervision through common standards, periodic reviews of national supervisory authorities and risk-assessments;
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enable the collection of information on anti-money laundering risks and trends and fostering exchange of such information between national supervisory ;
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facilitate cooperation with non-European Union countries on cross-border cases;
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establish a new permanent committee that brings together national anti-money laundering supervisory authorities.