UPDATE ON THE 5th MONEY LAUNDERING DIRECTIVE
On 22nd November the House of Commons EU Scrutiny Committee considered the 4th and 5th EU money laundering Directives. It noted that major areas of disagreement between the European Council and the EU Parliament were access to the register of trusts, the threshold of “beneficial ownership” of an entity and the supervision of “obliged entities”. Establishing a “proportionate level of access” to the register of trusts was said to be one of the UK’s priorities for the negotiations, without specifying what that means. It was also said to be unclear if the EU Parliament’s amendments to minimum AML standards in any country seeking a trade agreement with the EU on financial services would also have to be applied in the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, if the Government were to seek such an agreement post-Brexit – with the partial exception of Gibraltar, EU AML law does not apply in those territories at present. It was noted that discussions in the EU mechanisms are scheduled to continue in December 2017, and given the remaining divergences between the Parliament and the Council, it is likely the Directive will not be adopted until 2018.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmeuleg/301-ii/30121.htm#_idTextAnchor027
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