Germany to Implement the 6th AML Directive to Secure Financial Firms

The Federal Government of Germany has decided to draft a law for money laundering operations. Europe’s 6th Anti-money Laundering Directive will be implemented into Germany’s law. 6AMLD is a law that is dedicated to improving the law to fight criminal activities, money laundering, and terrorist financing all across Europe. 

This law differs from the previous AML regulations that dealt with regulatory issues, requirements of Know Your Customer (KYC), and the requirement of all businesses to report any suspicious activities. 

Now the proposed money laundering regulation will be able to gather the profits gained through illegal activity. This will make the prosecution easier and more useful since many activities will be involved.

This draft act will not affect the obligated organization much but it will change the procedure as to how they process. The law about the obligation to report the suspicious activity, the organizations are not required to determine any specific predicate crime, as it is the duty of the prosecutor and not the organizations. They are just to report suspicious transactions to the authorities. The change in this law does have a major impact on the existing law. This change is also applied to the KYC checks as well. 

German Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht announced: “We need to make law enforcement much more effective in this area [money laundering] to better combat organized crime and serious financial crimes. Proof of money laundering shall be much easier in future. That is why we want to replace the complex old offense of money laundering with a clear new criminal charge and extend it considerably. It will no longer be necessary to prove that assets originate from specific offenses. The only decisive factor will then be that assets have been obtained through criminal activity, whether through drug trafficking, protection racketing, trafficking in human beings, fraud or infidelity. If the perpetrator accepts the criminal origin and hides or disguises the asset, the new offense of money laundering should take effect. This will make it much easier for public prosecutors and courts to prove money laundering and to hold perpetrators consistently accountable”.