The European Commission has published an Action Plan to strengthen the fight against terrorist financing. The Action Plan focuses on two main strands:
- tracing terrorists through financial movements and preventing them from moving funds or other assets; and
- disrupting the sources of revenue used by terrorist organisations, by targeting their capacity to raise funds.
In relation to the first strand the Commission calls on Member States to commit to implement the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (4MLD) by the end of 2016. It will also propose a number of targeted amendments to the 4MLD at the latest by the end of Q2 2016. Such amendments include:
- a list of all compulsory checks (due diligence measures) that financial institutions should carry out on financial flows from countries having strategic deficiencies in their national anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regimes;
- widening the scope of information accessible by the Financial Intelligence Units;
- making it easier and faster for the Financial Intelligence Units to access information on the holders of bank and payment accounts;
- bring virtual currency exchange platforms under the scope of the 4MLD so that these platforms have to apply customer due diligence controls when exchanging virtual currency for real currency; and
- lowering the thresholds for identification and widening customer verification requirements.
View Commission presents Action Plan to strengthen the fight against terrorist financing, 2 February 2016
