(P) Is Romania compliant with the EU legislation regarding money laundering?
A year has passed since Romania should have implemented the EU Directive on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing.
A year has passed since Romania should have implemented the EU Directive on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing.
Considering that both money laundering and terrorist financing may occur in a transnational context, the necessity of a common legislation at the level of the European Union, to be in line with nowadays difficulties was very clear.
Therefore, the EU Directive 2015/849 regarding the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing has been adopted and subsequently published on the 20
th
of May 2015.
Despite the fact that all the Member States should have transposed the respective provisions no later than 26th of June 2017, Romania has not yet finalized the necessary procedures in this respect. Currently,
only a draft legislation has been prepared.
Given the fact that Romania failed to implement the Directive’s provisions until now, some questions may appear regarding the application of the respective provisions in Romania. One could be:
how are the provisions applied by the multinational companies,
being present in EU Member states that have already implemented the Directive and in EU Member states that have not yet implemented the Directive?
According to the provisions of the Directive, the legal entities, which are part of a group, are obliged to implement policies and procedures at the group’s level. Therefore, all the branches and majority-owned subsidiaries, from EU Member States and third countries will be subject to the group policies. Nevertheless, the Member States have the possibility to adopt stricter provisions than in the Directive if they consider necessary.
In case the group imposes some limitations, the legislation in the EU Member State where the subsidiary is located might have even stricter provisions, such approach being allowed by the Directive. Thus, in principle, the local company could be obliged to apply stricter provisions than the group policy.
At this moment, the legislation in force in Romania for the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing contains more permissive provisions than the new EU Directive. For example, the threshold for which the sellers should report the cash transactions is EUR 15,000 in Romania and EUR 10,000 according to the Directive.
