United States Senate, UAE Government, and Spain Make Significant Efforts to Curb Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Activities

United States Senate, UAE Government, and Spain Take effective measures to amend current Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws to curb money laundering and terrorist financing activities.

The US Senate is seeking votes on the country’s AML Act 2020 as a significant change in its National Defence Appropriation Act. This is a great step towards limiting money laundering in the US. If this Act is passed, shell companies will be eliminated.  Multiple researchers suggest that the US is one of the safest countries in the world to open a shell company. Surprisingly, this proposed amendment will see an advocacy coalition from multiple groups, including law enforcement, religious leaders, and the Trump Administration. In the US, the last money laundering bill was legislated in 2001, right after the World Trade Center attack. After the incident, US Congress passed Title III of its USA Patriot Act to determine and close shell banks. Afterwards, in 2008, after the financial crisis, US Senator Carl Levin came up with the first iteration of the AML bill titled the Incorporation Transparency Act. To stay put in the fight against financial crimes, the United Arab Emirates government has issued a Federal Decree to bring significant changes in its Anti-money Laundering, Financing of Terrorism, and Financing of Illegal Organization laws. Instead of just improving the effectiveness of the legislative and legal system, this Decree-law aims to support local financial regulators in enforcing the law to curb money laundering and terrorist financing. The Federal Decree is backed by the national strategy formulated to secure the local financial institutions by enforcing top-tier standards to counter financial crimes, particularly money laundering and terrorist financing. This Decree includes developing a National committee; however, a cabinet decision will be required. The committee will be responsible for overseeing, studying, and assessing the potency of national strategies and measures taken by the committee for curbing financial crimes. Moreover, the Decree also addresses the importance of fostering coordination between the UAE’s regulatory authorities and the National Committee. This move makes it easier for the National Committee to oversee the development of the Mutual Evaluation Report, which assesses the country’s efforts in meeting international AML and CFT regulations. Like the US and UAE, new anti-money laundering laws are set to be enforced in Spain after the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation published a draft law that will implement the EU’s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive. The main elements of the proposed legislation include significant changes to crowdfunding platforms while imposing registration of cryptocurrencies with the regulatory authorities. The new Spanish legislation proposes the inclusion of crowdfunding platforms and crowdlending, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), cryptocurrency platforms, management companies of security funds, and independent external experts. As per the new law, real estate developers will only be subject to this regulation if their annual income exceeds €120,000 or have a monthly income of more than €10,000. Additionally, a unified register will be created in the Ministry of Justice, which will be responsible for centralizing information of Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs). Lastly, the new will establish the obligation for legal persons as well as entities without legal personality to obtain, retain, and update UBO information for 10 years.

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