The Council of Ministers has given the green light to the first round of the Draft Law that partially modifies Law 10/2010, of April 28, on the Prevention of Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, with the purpose of adapt Spanish regulations to the European framework. In addition, the Government takes the opportunity to incorporate some news of the Fifth Directive on Money Laundering 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 begin 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 extension of the groups affected by the law. They are added as obliged subjects to the application of anti-money laundering measures, those that mediate rentals with monthly income exceeding 10,000 euros and participatory financing platforms (crowdfunding).
In turn, the new standard urges the development of mechanisms to facilitate complaints about breaches of the regulations for the prevention of money laundering. Specifically, it is established that entities subject to the regulation (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.
In addition, the standard reinforces 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 so far was determined on a case-by-case basis, is compared to those that are subject to special monitoring in general (knowledge of the origin of the client's funds, more intense analysis of the operational performance and the annual review of the information and documentation it handles).
In addition, a registry of service providers to companies is created, which will contain those subjects whose activity is the creation of partnerships for third parties or assignments of domicile, among others. And the content of the Financial Ownership File is modified, created with the purpose of preventing and preventing money laundering and terrorist financing. Until now, this file contained the opening or cancellation data of checking accounts, savings accounts, securities accounts and time deposits and, with the reform, will include safe deposit boxes and payment accounts.
The preliminary draft also allows establishing common bases 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 breach of the 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 worth to 10% of the group's consolidated turnover. Finally, cooperation systems between European supervisors dedicated to this matter are also reinforced.
