Stronger controls on traditional financial transactions and more effective systems to identify fraud and money laundering forces criminals to look for new ways to launder money. Often, digital channels and online platforms offer loopholes, especially for small payments. Microtransactions happen often below the radar of law enforcement and regulatory agencies. However, thousands of such small electronic payments can accumulate fast to significant amounts.
The 6th EU Money Laundering Directive aims to harmonize the criminal liability and the procedural requirements for the prosecution of money laundering in the EU countries and for international cooperation. What does that mean?
In order to protect the financial system from abuse, measures to comply with national and international embargo regulations are required. Filter software systems and their rule sets are of great importance there. However, these must be analyzed regularly to guarantee optimal hit quality.
Compliance will remain a complex and fast moving business also in 2020 and this blog will keep covering and looking at relevant topics from different perspectives. Diverse articles have caught a great deal of attention last year – from virtual bank accounts to KYC versus KYT to gifts and benefits from business partners. Here a complete overview and summary of the most popular topics in 2019.
Despite elaborated systems, financial crime is still an omnipresent topic for many companies. The increasing popularity of so-called direct banks presents compliance with a new challenge.
While Germany, Spain and Greece were popular vacation destinations in 2018, bookings for North Africa and Turkey are on the rise this year. No matter where to: more and more trips are not booked through a travel agency, but by tourists themselves. In Germany, 40 percent of bookings already in 2017 – trend rising. The Internet is changing the travel
At full throttle, the European Union is moving forward with the establishment of a legal framework to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The 5th EU Money Laundering Directive was published in June 2018. Instead of the usual time frame of 24-months, member states are prompted to implement the 5th EU Money Laundering Directive into national legislation by January 10,
At the end of January, the last 500 bank notes were issued in the euro zone. Exempt were Germany and Austria, where the purple notes were used more frequently than elsewhere. Now both countries followed suit. At the end of April, the grace period for those 500s expired, but the bills in circulation will continue to be valid indefinitely. This
International Compliance In many countries the number of compliance laws and regulations has multiplied over the last decade. This has led to major discussions and a rapid development of the compliance sector. The pressure is high, but it goes without saying, that all national laws and guidelines must be complied with. For international business, things get even more complicated. While
Cryptocurrencies are developed, motivated by the financial crisis in 2008, to be independent of financial institutions or nations and are traded directly between users by peer-to-peer transaction authentication. In recent years the popularity and the use of cryptocurrencies is steadily increasing and so is the pressure for regulations. This challenges traditional methods of banking compliance. The anonymity, liquidity, and borderless