EU lawmakers voted on April 24 to create a promised EU anti-money laundering agency as part of a package that would also ban large cash payments across Europe. 482 participants voted “for”, 47 “against”.
The move, taken by MEPs in the last voting session before June elections, means new rules apply to football deals and cryptocurrency transactions as the bloc seeks to restore its reputation after a series of scandals in the financial sector.
The new restrictions prohibit professional traders from accepting or paying more than €10,000 in cash. Some lawmakers argue it’s an attack on financial freedom.
One of the most thorny issues in the complex package is geographical: the question of where to locate the EU’s new anti-money laundering agency. At this stage, the German financial center Frankfurt won. More than 400 of its employees will oversee dirty money in the bloc’s 40 largest financial institutions.