On June 26, 2017, the Directive of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union “On preventing the use of the financial system for money laundering and financing of terrorism”, signed on May 20, 2015, came into force. The document is aimed not only at improving the “anti-laundering” legislation of the EU member states, but also preventing of tax evasion. The last one is planned to be achieved by increasing the level of transparency of the corporate and financial information.
Each country of the European Union is obliged to bring the local legislative base in the line with the provisions of the Directive, introducing a number of changes. Among them are:
- toughening of requirements for the banks, as well as companies providing accounting and legal services, regarding the analysis and assessment of the risks when dealing with the clients;
- organization of collection and centralized storage of the information about the beneficial owners of the companies (including trusts and funds) providing the access to the competent authorities;
- optimization of the cooperation and simplification of information exchange between the bodies of financial intelligence of the EU member states on monitoring suspicious financial transactions;
- development of a coherent policy for the countries that are not the part of the European Union and having the legislative gaps for counteraction to the laundering of illegally obtained funds and financing of terrorism.
It is important not to forget that the innovations will affect the interests of the Ukrainian businessmen in a certain way. First of all, they will affect the activities of companies with their own representative offices or partners in the EU, as well as using the services of the European banks.
