Go back to the Europarl portal

Choisissez la langue de votre document :

  • bg - български
  • es - español
  • cs - čeština
  • da - dansk
  • de - Deutsch
  • et - eesti keel
  • el - ελληνικά
  • en - English (Selected)
  • fr - français
  • ga - Gaeilge
  • hr - hrvatski
  • it - italiano
  • lv - latviešu valoda
  • lt - lietuvių kalba
  • hu - magyar
  • mt - Malti
  • nl - Nederlands
  • pl - polski
  • pt - português
  • ro - română
  • sk - slovenčina
  • sl - slovenščina
  • fi - suomi
  • sv - svenska
 Index 
 Full text 
Verbatim report of proceedings
XML 2k
Thursday, 8 October 2020 - Brussels Revised edition

Fight against money laundering, following the FinCEN files (debate)
MPphoto
 

  Eero Heinäluoma, on behalf of the S&D Group. – Madam President, USD 2 000 billion: this is almost twice the amount of the seven—year MFF and three times the value of the recovery and resilience instrument and, at the same time, it is at least 30 times the Finnish annual budget.

Suspicious activity reports which were recently leaked concern transactions worth USD 2 000 billion. Banks must fill in one of these reports if they are worried one of their clients might be up to no good. The report is sent to the authorities. Despite these alarms, banks still often execute these transactions. Again, it is thanks to the great work of investigation journalists that this scandal is revealed.

It demonstrates once again that the existing Anti—Money Laundering (AML) system simply does not work. It is a Swiss cheese, full of holes.

For a long time, my group has been calling for a uniform regulatory framework, an AML regulation. Regulatory clarity and certainty is needed for the public sector and for industry. We also need stricter rules around rules on consumer due diligence and beneficial ownership transparency.

Stronger EU supervision is urgently needed too. Whether we need a new EU agency or extending the powers of the European Banking Authority is in a way less important, as long as the job is done far much better than today. Therefore, the supervisor should get enough resources, staff and independence and, of course, more EU supervision will only work provided there is good cooperation with the national competent authorities, as they are on the ground.

Supervising can only be done properly provided data around suspicious transactions flow easily cross—border. Therefore, we need a European Union Finance Intelligence Unit. Detecting and supervising suspicious cases is one thing, tackling and sanctioning is something else.

I realise this is a very sensitive field of crime enforcement, and Member States like to keep control. Nonetheless, if we want to be serious in tackling AML, we need more deterring sanctions. Imposing big fines is all well and good, but I have not the impression that it changes fundamentally a culture. Here a stronger role for Europol is really needed.

 
Last updated: 8 December 2020Legal notice - Privacy policy