A fifth directive to weave ever more tightly the European spider web making it possible to fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Wednesday, February 12, Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Finance, and Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Public Accounts, are to present to the Council of Ministers "a package" of ordinances, decrees and orders enabling the first means of control implemented to be increased in the aftermath of the attacks in France in the years 2015 and 2016.
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To be effective, they obey three essential functions. Multiply whistleblowers who detect problematic flows or financial operations, ensure that they respect their obligation to inform Bercy and widen the consultation of large bank files and business registers as much as possible. If banks and insurance companies were the first to have to make "suspicious transaction reports", new professions were gradually subjected to them such as notaries, lawyers, auditors, accountants and, lately, the art trades or even real estate rentals, the gaming trades and the crypto-active sector.
However, the new texts further expand the professions subject to this reporting obligation. These are first of all the clerks of the commercial courts which keep the commercial registers and now that of the beneficial owners. This file can be traced back to individuals, who are the beneficial owners of companies or trusts. It will be up to the clerks to send back to Tracfin, the intelligence service of Bercy, "the divergences" of data from these different files. In addition, the consultation of this file of beneficial owners will be compulsory for any person "having a legitimate interest" to consult it and no longer for the only anti-money laundering authorities. Any professional entering into a business relationship with a commercial partner will be required to do so. The Carpas, the independent cash settlement funds for lawyers, are now also subject to suspicious transaction reports. Until then, these two types of actors were only subject to a duty of communication, which requires them to answer questions from the investigation services and not to be proactive.
In addition, the new European text imposes a more systematic “supervision” of the large control bodies - whether it be Customs, the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Suppression of Fraud, or the Authority for the Control of online games -, on all these professions. It rationalizes this control function and clarifies their power.
The directive, which generalizes the establishment of centralized national registers of bank accounts in all countries of the Union, is no longer limited to these. It is up to the States to extend these files to payment and electronic money accounts and to safes held by natural persons. At the instigation of Tracfin, France had already made the prepaid card and electronic money services subject to declaration in order to curb the microfinance specific to terrorist circles. Finally, a duty of vigilance is imposed on financial transactions from and to the countries which appear on the black and gray lists of terrorism, from North Korea to Pakistan.
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