EU needs to do more to combat money laundering, terrorist funding: report

Money laundering is the process by which criminal proceeds are “cleaned” so that their illegal origins are hidden. 

It is usually associated with the types of organised crime that generate huge profits in cash, such as trafficking in drugs, weapons and human beings as well as fraud.

Brussels, Belgium | Xinhua | The European Union has a fragmented approach to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) warned on Monday.

In a special report on the subject, the guardians of EU finances said that although the value of suspicious transactions within the EU is estimated to be hundreds of billions of euros, its approach to counter it was fragmented, adding that the EU needed a stronger oversight framework for combating money laundering.

Although the relevant EU bodies have a policymaking and coordinating role and limited direct powers, efforts are largely managed at the national level.

The special report from the ECA concludes that EU-level action to combat money laundering and terrorist financing has weaknesses, and that the EU’s oversight framework is fragmented and poorly coordinated and thus fails to ensure a coherent approach and a level playing field.

Money laundering is the practice of legitimizing the proceeds of crime by filtering them into the regular economy to disguise their illegal origin. Within Europe, Europol estimates that the value of suspicious transactions is equivalent to about 1.3 percent of EU’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“EU-level weaknesses with regard to money laundering and terrorist financing needs to be addressed, and the EU’s supervisory role significantly strengthened,” said Mihails Kozlovs, a member of the ECA responsible for the report.

“Much more needs to be done to ensure that the EU law is implemented promptly and coherently. For a start, the EU should use regulations in preference to directives wherever possible, given the need for legislation to be implemented coherently at Member State level,” Kozlovs added.

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Xinhua