The guidance is part of the rapidly evolving rules on anti-money laundering and aims to promote UAE as a jurisdiction compliant with best practices.
By Brian Meenagh, Ksenia Koroleva, and Matthew Rodwell
On August 1, 2022, the UAE Central Bank (CBUAE) issued the Guidance for Licensed Financial Institutions on the Risks Relating to Payments.[1]
The guidance was issued to implement the requirements of Federal Decree Law No. 20 of 2018 on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing
US Department of Justice’s sprawling report reveals regulatory enforcement priorities for cryptocurrencies and highlights multi-agency cooperation.
By Susan Engel, Miles Jennings, Benjamin Naftalis, Yvette Valdez, Eric Volkman, Stephen Wink, Douglas K. Yatter, and Deric Behar
On October 8, 2020, the US Attorney General’s Cyber-Digital Task Force of the Department of Justice (DOJ) published an extensive white paper, titled Cryptocurrency: An Enforcement Framework (the Report). The Report gives a detailed overview of legitimate uses of cryptocurrencies, the risks of illicit cryptocurrency activity, and related federal enforcement challenges and response strategies.
New regulatory requirements, including registration and customer disclosure requirements, apply to regulated and unregulated persons carrying on relevant cryptoasset business.
On 20 December 2019, the UK government published the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Regulations (Amendment) Regulations 2019 (the Amending Regulations). The Amending Regulations update the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (the MLRs) to meet the UK’s obligation to transpose Directive (EU) 2018/843 (5MLD) into UK law. A key element of the Amending Regulations is that they bring Cryptoasset Exchange Providers (CEP) and Custodian Wallet Providers (CWP) — including persons making an initial coin offering (ICO) — within the scope of UK money laundering regulations. Therefore, from 10 January 2020 CEPs and CWPs are required to comply with the requirements of the MLRs (subject to limited transitional provisions for existing cryptoasset businesses relating to registration with the FCA). Significantly, the Amending Regulations will impact any UK person conducting cryptoasset business of a kind that is captured by the new definitions of CEPs and CWPs (including, for example, existing UK authorised financial services firms that carry on cryptoasset business which will be subject to new requirements relating specifically to cryptoasset business).
HM Treasury consulted on its proposed changes in April 2019 in its paper Transposition of the Fifth Money Laundering Directive: Consultation (the Consultation Paper). As the UK has not yet formally withdrawn from the EU, its approach to implementing the changes introduced by 5MLD is not impacted by Brexit and it is anticipated that the UK will continue to apply EU financial regulatory standards (including anti-money laundering (AML) requirements) immediately post-Brexit through “onshored” legislation.
New EU anti-money laundering measures have been approved by European legislators.
By Stuart Davis and Charlotte Collins
The European Parliament and Council have finally signed off on the text of the fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (known as MLD5).
Overview
The new directive is of particular interest to the FinTech sector as, amongst other things, MLD5 includes measures to increase transparency around more recently developed instruments of payment — namely cryptocurrencies and prepaid cards. Both these instruments lend themselves to anonymity and raise concerns that they could be used to help fund terrorist activities.
MLD5 will lower the threshold for identifying the holders of anonymous prepaid cards from €250 to €150. It will also require know-your-customer (KYC) checks to be performed for remote payment transactions exceeding €50, or if a withdrawal of more than €50 is made.