Press release, 15 May 2014
At the plenary sitting, the Seimas has adopted the amendments to the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (draft No XIIP-1431(2) EU) in order to improve legal regulation of the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. The amendments have been passed by a vote of 72 to 0 with 3 abstentions.
The Law establishes that enhanced customer identification will be always applied in respect of natural persons involved in politics and permanently residing in another EU Member State or a third country. Financial institutions and other entities may decide not to apply enhanced customer identification in respect of other natural persons involved in politics if the Law does not provide for that.
The Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing is supplemented by new provisions on complex or unusually large transactions and unusual patterns of transactions. The amendments provide that financial institutions and other entities will have to pay attention to the activities, which, by their nature, could be related to money laundering and/or terrorist financing and in particular to complex or unusually large transactions and all unusual patterns of transactions that do not have an apparent economic or visible lawful purpose and to business relations or monetary operations with customers from third countries, where preventive measures against money laundering and/or terrorist financing are inadequate or do not meet international standards according to the information announced officially by international intergovernmental organisations.
The Seimas has also decided to extend the suspension of suspicious monetary operations and transactions from 5 to 10 working days. The explanatory note of the Law states that new legal provisions will provide the legal framework for more effective application of preventive measures against money laundering and terrorist financing and will shape an intolerant and unfavourable environment for money laundering and terrorist financing.
The amendments to the Law have been designed to implement the recommendations of the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism.
Rimas Rudaitis, Public Relations Unit, Communications Department, Office of the Seimas, tel. +370 5 239 6132, e-mail: [email protected]
