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New developments regarding the proposed Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (“AMLR”) and the sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (“AMLD6”) have emerged with the new political agreement reached by the European Union (“EU”) Council (the “Council”) on 7 December 2022.
This now positions the Council to commence negotiations with the European Parliament (EP), for the eventual agreement and adoption of the final version of the legislative texts. Thereafter the acts will form a part of the “AML rulebook”, together with a regulation on information accompanying transfers of funds and certain crypto-assets.
The purpose of the proposed AML rulebook is to have a single consistent AML/CFT framework across the European Union to ease compliance for subject persons who are subject to AML/CFT rules and supervision, in particular those who operate cross-border activities. With this, there will also be a new supervisory authority (i.e., the European AML Authority ‘AMLA’) which will be established in 2023 and operational by 2024. It is expected that AMLA will have direct supervision powers and the ability to crack down on illicit finance across all EU Member states. Further, like any other supervisory authority, AMLA will be able to impose fines and penalties upon any subject person which fails to comply with the AML rulebook requirements.
The main legislative changes proposed by the Council includes the following:
The Council is now ready to begin trialogue negotiations with the EP to agree on a final version of the text. Therefore, the proposed changes mentioned above are not yet final, and may be subject to further changes.