Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

A very interesting conference about links between money laundering and crime took place on Friday 2nd February at the Law Courts of Monaco, before an audience of jurists and financial professionals. It was led by Gilles Duteil, PhD in Management Science, a member of the European research group on financial crime and organised crime and a legal expert at the Court of Appeal in Aix-en-Provence.
As Philippe Narmino, the Director of Judicial Services pointed out to introduce the conference, the Principality of Monaco was welcoming Gilles Duteil within the context of the strategy to combat economic and organised crime.
Gilles Duteil concluded his talk by stating that, despite of the will of the international community to seek to stop the progression of organised trans-national crime, the methods implemented up until now remain insufficient considering the amplitude of the phenomenon.

See conference (in French)

Strasbourg, 21-23 February 2007

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures (MONEYVAL) will, for the first time, hold a joint plenary meeting aimed at strengthening international co-operation to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Plenary will study the FATF’s mutual evaluation of Turkey’s anti-money laundering laws and their enforcement, MONEYVAL’s 3rd round mutual evaluation report on Georgia and the MONEYVAL progress report on Cyprus.

Participants will also discuss the abuse of Value Added Tax systems for money laundering and money-laundering in South America

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