The Cabinet of Ministers approved amendments to the law on the prevention of the legalization of criminally acquired funds and the financing of terrorism, providing for the renaming of the Service for the Prevention of the Legalization of Criminally Gained Funds (Control Service) into the Financial Intelligence Service and the expansion of powers of the Register of Enterprises.
As the Ministry of Finance explained earlier, the purpose of changing the name of the Control Service is to provide a common practice and understanding of the functions of this service between the participating countries.
The amendments also provide for a change in the order of the messages sent to the Control Service, rejection of the notion of “unusual transaction” and reporting only really suspicious transactions. At the same time, it is planned to oblige the subjects of the law to provide other information – on threshold declarations, which are stored in the Control Service and are used at their disposal in the further processing and analysis of transactions.
The amendments will prevent the provision of false information about the true beneficiaries of enterprises.
The Register of Enterprises will be obliged to inform law enforcement agencies about the provision of false information about the true beneficiaries, while also warning other subjects of the law about a possible inconsistency of information with reality.
To ensure compliance with the standards set by the amendments, the Ministry of Justice will require an additional 1.95 million euros in 2020.