Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

At their meeting in Brussels on Thursday, 15 February, the council of European Union justice and home affairs ministers agreed on incorporating the main provisions of the Prüm Treaty into the EU’s legal framework. The resulting draft decision is to be forwarded without delay to the European Parliament for its comments, meaning that the process of incorporating the treaty into EU legislation could be completed before the German Presidency ends on June 30.

The treaty, which was signed by seven European states (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain) in the German town of Prüm on 27 May 2005, provides for greater cross-border cooperation of police and judicial authorities.

In Brussels, Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble stated, “Transposing the treaty into EU legislation will enable all 27 EU Member States to benefit from the enormous added value provided by the treaty. Our aim is to create a modern police information network for more effective crime control throughout Europe

See press release

FIU Malta strives to be a leader in the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing thus contributing towards a safe and stable financial and economic environment. It works towards this mission through information collection, analysis and co-operation in the dissemination of information suspected of money laundering or terrorist financing related activities thus supporting the domestic and international law enforcement
investigative efforts.
The last annual report provides information on the way AML-CFT requirements are implemented in Malta.


See report

In its last Newsletter the association PRiM (Professionals of Risk Management) focuses on people risk.
The goal sounded interesting: "although discussions on operational risk have become commonplace since the late 1990’s, the topic of people risk, which is actually a part of operational risk, has received relatively little attention. Far too often financial service providers assume that people risk is a human resource issue and therefore do not give it the risk management attention it deserves. For this reason, the eighth PRiM Risk Newsletter focuses on people risk"
So sounded interesting the contributors list: articles on people risk from Arnaud Jouanneau, Head of Internal Audit, CapitalatWork Group and President of the Luxembourg Institute of Internal Auditors (IACI) and Gilbert Renel, Partner, Deloitte Consulting and Advisory; an interview with Viviane Harnois, Head of Human Resources, ABN Amro Bank; Samuel Grand, Head of Operational Risk Management, ABN Amro Bank; John Li, Managing Partner, KPMG; Michael May, Managing Director, HSBC Securities Services and Laurent Vanderweyen, Chief administration Officer, RBC Dexia Investor Services.

Unfortunately they did not focus on actual issues relating to people risk for a financial centre.

When reading the newsletter, it appears that the word “growth” is quoted 13 times. But keyword relating to people risk are missing:

Social words relating to employees like “strike”, “social”, “conflict”... are not quoted. The current conflict between the ABBL (The Luxembourg Bankers Association (ABBL) is the professional organisation of most of the banks established in Luxembourg and also of other financial sector operators) and Unions relating to the collective bargaining demonstrates that Luxembourg is no longer the place with no social conflicts it used to be, which is definitely a threat for the reputation of Political Economic and Social Stability of the centre.

Furthermore critical keywords for a financial centre are missing “ethics”, “ethical”, “deontology”, integrity....

They did not quote any judiciary examples of fraud that are not confidential to illustrate.

The only contributor that saves the level is Gilbert Renel from Deloitte, who quoted sensitive words relating to employees: “fraud” (7 times), “honest” (once), “honesty” (once), « dishonest » (once).

The words “honest” and “dishonesty” are quoted once each in the editorial conclusion.

The word « fraud » is quoted once in a question from PRiM, and to answer, 3 times by Michael May and once by Viviane Harnois, both to minimise the phenomenon.


Professional ethic is not sought in recruitments. The disreputable character is not the dishonest employee, but the one who ask question about dysfunctions and/or who is not a yes person (see article : "The average employee in a bank is a sheep either white or black")

See Newsletter