Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the British Bankers' Association
COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF A 3RD EU MONEY LAUNDERING
DIRECTIVE
At the Treasury Committee hearing on 12 October,
I undertook to confirm in writing the position on the draft 3rd
EU Money Laundering Directive going ahead without any cost benefit
analysis.
Although we do not of course have access to
the internal papers of the Commission, to the best of our knowledge
a cost benefit analysis of this Directive has not been prepared,
and certainly none has been made available to us.
To put the Directive into context, the European
Council and Council adopted a 2nd Money Laundering Directive in
December 2001. The Treasury Money laundering Regulations 2003,
which inter alia transposed the 2nd Directive into UK Law,
were laid before Parliament in November 2003 and came into force
earlier this year. While member states were absorbing the new
EU legislation (and we understand that two member states have
still to implement them), at the request, we understand, of the
Netherlands and some other member states, the Commission published
a draft of a 3rd Directive at the end of June 2004. One of the
purposes of the 3rd Directive is to bring Community law on money
laundering into line with the Forty Recommendations of the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF) which were substantially revised and
expanded and adopted by FATF member governments in June 2003.
I can also confirm that there was no impact
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