EU weighs new anti-money laundering body

The EU is to explore the creation of a central authority to crack down on money laundering activity after a series of high-profile scandals have underlined Europe’s weaknesses in preventing dirty cash from flowing through its banks, the Financial Times wrote referring to the draft document, to be discussed by EU Finance Ministers in December.

Report informs citing Kommersant that they are going to instruct the European Commission to prepare recommendations on the work of a new independent body which monitor the compliance of financial institutions with rules that prevent money laundering, including customer verification.

This decision was the result of a number of large-scale scandals related to money laundering, in the center of which were Latvian ABLV, Danish Danske Bank, Swedish Swedbank and others. The creation of a new regulator is supported by France and the Netherlands. In their opinion, the best solution may be to create a new body from scratch, although the option of strengthening the existing European banking authority is also being considered.