MONEYVAL Urges Poland to Improve its AML/CFT Regulatory Framework

Richard Marley

February 02, 2022

MONEYVAL has called upon Polish authorities to improve their regulatory framework and work on strengthening their AML/CFT measures.

In a report published on 1st February 2020, the Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL Committee urged Polish to work on strengthening their practical measures against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Most of the legal requirements and practical measures to combat financial crimes are put in place to ensure a certain level of transparency in legal dealings, arrangements, and beneficial ownership.

The new report mentions that the private sector showed significant improvements in implementing preventive measures to combat money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF), including customer due diligence and internal controls.

The report enlists positive conclusions from Poland’s efforts to comply with international standards. However, there is still room for further improvements in the country’s capacity to deal with threats like money laundering that arise from particular offenses.

The report highlights that Polish authorities failed to display a comprehensive view of the real and potential amounts of criminal proceeds. Therefore, more efforts are needed to ensure that money laundering and terrorist financing risks are properly identified and prevented.

Although the Polish Financial Intelligence Unit is a primary source of financial intelligence and has access to a large variety of data from the public and private sectors, the report suggests that their analysis of ML/TF risks is not satisfactory at the investigative stage.

MONEYVAL urges Poland to begin taking procedural and institutional measures to ensure that money laundering is detected in the early stages and investigated properly.