Brussels to improve anti-money laundering authority

The decision comes after a series of scandals rocked the region’s banking sector and exposed uneven application across the block. According to Financial Times, the committee would start consulting EU members on whether to create a new supervisor to oversee the fight money laundering or rather entrust additional powers to the European Banking Authority (EBA).

The committee also wants to introduce new regulations to tackle divergent enforcement practices within the union that result from the reluctance of some EU capitals to implement anti-money laundering directives over the years.

In 2018, US law enforcement officials discovered institutionalised money laundering at the now-extinct Latvia-based bank ABLV, linked to Russia. Other setbacks include revelations that EUR 200 billion of suspicious transactions have passed through the Estonia-based branch of Danske Bank. ING was fined 775 million euros for failure to comply with compliance obligations, and Deutsche Bank was trapped in a scheme that illegally moved criminal funds from Russia to the west.

Brussels also sued national governments for delaying updating EU anti-money laundering legislation: the committee at one point opened formal proceedings against each EU country for failure to transpose the rules into its national statutes.