On Monday 16 December, the three European Financial Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published joint guidelines to strengthen cross-border cooperation and information exchange in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
"Recent high-profile AML/CFT cases involving EU banks suggest that, in cases where firms operate in different countries, failure by AML/CFT supervisors to communicate effectively with their EU counterparts created gaps that allowed serious compliance failures to continue for long periods of time", they write in a statement.
With their guidelines, the ESAs therefore intend to ensure that in future, the supervisory authorities of the different Member States have a formal framework for cooperation in the supervision of companies operating on a cross-border basis.
Thus, the text provides that the so-called "main" supervisory authority should set up a supervisory college for the supervision of money laundering risks when an undertaking operates in three or more Member States. In this way, all supervisors will have access to comprehensive information about the company, which will inform their risk assessment and supervisory approach, explain the ESAs.
This college will bring together all national authorities involved in the supervision of money laundering risks for this company, but also prudential supervisors and third-country supervisors. It may agree on a common approach and coordinated actions.
The guidelines lay down the rules for the creation and operation of these colleges. They also contain provisions to structure cooperation in situations where the conditions for establishing a college are not met.
The guidelines will start to apply from 10 January 2020, by which time Member States must have transposed the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)