Information accompanying transfers of funds

The Council took stock of work in progress on a draft directive on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.

The discussion focused on the following outstanding issues:

• registries for information on beneficial ownership: where such information should be stored, who should have access to it and under what conditions;
• supranational risk assessment: role of the European supervisory authorities and of the outcome of risk assessment;
• supranational monitoring of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes: mechanisms to ensure effective implementation;
• third country equivalence: whether and how to modify the approach used to determine equivalence of anti-money laundering regimes in third countries.

The Council confirmed the aim rapidly agreeing a general approach, so that agreement can be reached with the European Parliament before the end of its current term (May 2014).