Christian Lindner, the German Finance Minister, announced to the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council in a letter dated Friday 26 May that his government would be setting up a new national authority to combat financial crime. According to this document, to which EUROPE has had access, the new Federal Agency for Combating Financial Crime (Bundesamt zur Bekämpfung von Finanzkriminalität or BBF) will be set up in 2024.
“It will merge together financial crime analysis, investigation and supervision under one roof” and will be “equipped with strategic and operational competencies to coordinate the national supervisory authorities, especially in the non-financial sector”, the letter states.
In August 2022, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the OECD’s intergovernmental body for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, pointed out a number of possible improvements in its mutual evaluation report on Germany (see EUROPE 13009/19).
In doing so, it intends to strengthen its bid to host the headquarters of the future European anti-money laundering authority ‘AMLA’ in Frankfurt. The country had already indicated that it would be a candidate, along with France, Spain, Luxembourg, Austria, Latvia and Lithuania. The application procedure is currently being drawn up by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13182/2).
Read the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/788 (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)