The Council of Ministers has given the green light to the first round of the Draft Law partially modifying Law 10/2010, of April 28, on the Prevention of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, in order to adapt Spanish regulations to the European framework. In addition, the Government takes advantage of the incorporation of some new features of the V Money Laundering Directive that will be published throughout the first half of this year. The text must obtain the corresponding opinions and will return to the Council of Ministers to be approved as a Bill and to start the parliamentary process.
Although most of the elements of the European directive are already in force in Spain, new features are incorporated, such as the expansion of the groups affected by the law. They are added as obligated subjects to the application of the anti-money laundering measures, those who mediate in rents with a monthly income of more than 10,000 euros and the participatory financing platforms (crowdfunding).
In turn, the new norm urges the development of mechanisms to facilitate complaints about non-compliance with the regulations for the prevention of money laundering. Specifically, it is established that the entities subject to the rule (banks, insurers, law firms, among others) must create internal complaint mechanisms, while the Executive Service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering (Sepblac) will have a system to receive and channel complaints.
Likewise, the norm reinforces the controls for people with public responsibility (Politically Exposed Persons or PEPs), which currently include those of autonomous communities and local entities. The control of national public responsibility persons, whose intensity until now has been determined on a case-by-case basis, is equated with foreigners, who are subject to special monitoring in general (knowledge of the origin of the client's funds, more intense analysis of the that it performs and the annual review of the information and documentation that it manages).
In addition, a registry of service providers to companies is created, which will contain those subjects whose activity is the creation of companies for third parties or assignments of domicile, among others. And the content of the Financial Ownership File, created with the purpose of preventing and preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, is modified. Until now, this file contained the data for opening or canceling current accounts, savings accounts, securities accounts and time deposits and, with the reform, it will include safe deposit boxes and payment accounts.
The preliminary draft also allows establishing common databases or systems for storing data collected in customer identification processes. Entities can thus save resources by being able to share this information. These systems will be implemented with full respect for the Data Protection Law.
The sanctioning regime for non-compliance with prevention regulations is another of the points that are modified with the preliminary draft. The maximum fines go from 5% of the entity's net assets to 10% of the group's consolidated business volume. Finally, the cooperation systems between European supervisors dedicated to this matter are also reinforced.
