Money Laundering

The Directive on money laundering holds up many kinds of normal business exchange in the member countries. The Directive, and member state implementation of the same, focus on banks for handling the policing and reporting on illegal or unwanted business transactions. Only the most obvious cases are reported to the police, which obviously is the normal and required procedure for illigal activity of any kind. Other cases are borderline or shadowy, meaning, there are only discretionary evidence or just absense of documentation. In reality, this is yet another case of the EU establishing a surveillance regime both for private citizens and for businesses. A sureveillance that is in conflict with the Treaty, Conventions and member states' constitutions.

Like many other cases where the constitutional rights are undermined, the driver and the main excuse is that the situation is dire. The amount of whitewashing is growing, and the enourmous sums come from criminal activity that must with all means be supressed. This is all correct, but it is more than high time to review the measures introduced and take a thotough look at what harm the removal of privacy privileges are doing to the majority of law-abiding citizens and businesses.

Many people will also remember the major banks involved in large scale money laundering with especially Russian money and channeled through EU banks' subsidiaries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Their activity went unpunished for decades, allthough top management was aware and indeed the relevant authorities were aware or should have been aware of the illegal activity. This is also correct, and the sie of the fraud and the appearent level of complicity of the bank top management was at the least puzzeling. However, the result was rules that hit small businesses and small savers, private citizens to a much higher degree than warranted by the connected risk.

The money laundering Directive least to member states implementations that are incredibly biased against ordinaty citizens and small businesses. The banks are, after some bureaucratic hesitation, implementing the rules to the letter and smallest detail. This has led to extrordinary complications for even simple transactions such as buying a house, or even transferring money to the account of your spouse, and the list goes on.

It is time for a reset and honest evaluation of the money laundering avoidance rules to make sure they live up to the proportionality required. The action taken should match the severytiy of the potential harm inflicted on society and public safety.

https://www.svd.se/a/3MkkoP/finanspolisen-bostadsmarknaden-en-hogrisksektor-for-penningtvatt