New turn of the screw in the fight against money laundering. The government hopes to adopt an amendment, the third in a few years, to prevent the country from falling on the blacklist of international organizations. However, the debate in Parliament on the amendment is far from a pleasure. Several voices in the relevant parliamentary committee in the House of Representatives are rising to ask for clarification on certain provisions. This is the case for the opposition led by the WFP, which clearly displays fears about the criminalization of certain commercial or financial practices that are not a priori outlawed. Other parliamentary voices are calling for an impact study on the national economy since the entry into force of the first reform. The problem is that the government is bound by a timetable and hopes to reach a consensus and the adoption of the new reform as soon as possible. It remains to be seen whether the Executive will be persuasive in the coming days.

It should be noted that the review of the reform had been delayed due to the health crisis. As a reminder, at the end of 2019, the Government Council adopted Bill No. 12.18 amending and supplementing the Penal Code and Law No. 43.05 on the fight against money laundering. Article 2 of the draft increased the list of natural and legal persons subject to the tax to cover, in particular, sellers of works of art, precious stones and casinos, including online casinos or those floating on board boats.

That's not all. The new draft establishes a number of rules to be observed by taxable persons automatically through the triggering of control, the verification of the identity of customers including occasional ones. For those responsible, this includes tracing and seizing illicit funds for possible confiscation, adapting the national legislative system to the international standards adopted by the Financial Action Task Force in this section, and addressing the shortcomings contained in the current legislation, in particular the observations identified by the mutual evaluation during its first and second stages.

In the same vein, new categories have been added to the list of offences mentioned in article 574-2 of the Penal Code, including activities relating to financial markets and offences relating to sales and services provided on a pyramidal basis.