The European Union will create a new agency to combat money laundering and new transparency rules for crypto-asset transfers.
Reuters reports citing EU documents.
The European Commission proposes the creation of an Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), that will become the «centerpiece» of a supervisory and regulatory system composed of national authorities.
The AMLA will both make operational decisions on risky financial companies, and coordinate the work of national supervisory authorities in combating money laundering.
EU anti-money laundering rules will be binding on member states to prevent criminals exploiting differences between national regulators.
New for the EU will be the rules on disclosing the real owners of cryptocurrency assets.
In 2018, Europe faced an anti-money laundering scandal after several countries began investigating Danish commercial bank Danske Bank over € 200 billion of suspicious transactions that passed through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) already has an anti-money laundering unit of 10 officials with no real authority.
The AMLA document is to be published on 20 July after final tweaks and the new EU body is due to be up and running by 2024.
