Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

Money laundering and terrorist financing: Commission adopts 'level 2' implementing measures to Third Directive. The European Commission has adopted last week (3 August) technical measures implementing the Third Directive on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. The Directive was adopted in October 2005 (IP/05/682) and is to be implemented at the latest in December 2007. These technical measures were previously endorsed under the comitology procedure by the Committee for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (IP/06/605) - a regulatory committee composed of Member States and chaired by the European Commission - and by the European Parliament. The measures are based on extensive stakeholder consultation and address the following:
(a) a definition of what should be understood by the term 'Politically Exposed Person';
(b) technical criteria allowing the extension of situations in which the procedures for customer due diligence may be simplified; and
(c) technical criteria allowing Member States to exclude from the scope of the application of the Directive those persons/entities conducting financial activities on an occasional or very limited basis.

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The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption monitoring mechanism, the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) has published three weeks ago its Second Round Evaluation Report on Cyprus. The report has been made public with the agreement of the Cypriot authorities.

GRECO’s Second Evaluation Round focuses on measures taken to recover the proceeds of corruption, to prevent and combat corruption in public administration and to prevent companies being used to shield corruption.

GRECO addresses a series of recommendations to Cyprus tailored to improve its capacity to combat corruption. They deal, inter alia, with police specialisation in the use of confiscation and interim measures regarding corruption proceeds, citizen’s access to information held by public authorities, the mandate of the Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman), conflicts of interest in situations where public officials move to the private sector and sanctions applicable to legal persons convicted of corruption offences.

Measures taken by Cyprus to implement the recommendations will be assessed by GRECO in the context of a specific compliance procedure, towards the beginning of 2008.

See Report