EU poised for deal on proceeds of crime info sharing

Legislation that allows the confiscation of the proceeds of crime (POC) has become a key weapon in the fight against counterfeiting and other crimes, were the penalties can be dwarfed by the potential to make money.

One big problem however is that criminals tend to transfer POC across borders to try to hide their illicit gains, place them out of the reach of enforcement authorities and launder the money.

Now, an agreement between the EU presidency and the European Parliament has laid the groundwork for improved information-sharing between national authorities that should make it easier to track down and seize POC.

New EU money-laundering rules due to be adopted soon already mean that countries will have to make information from centralised bank account registers available through a single access point – effectively revealing “who has which bank account and where,” according to a Parliament statement.

The new deal means this will now be accessible to national authorities dealing with criminal offences, which should accelerate investigations as it bypasses the need to a collect information via current cross-border cooperation channels, which can be slow and inefficient.

There is also an agreement to require financial institutions to use a standardised format for bank statements, which will also make it easier for law enforcement to track illegal money flows.

The agreement will have to be endorsed by member states representatives before its adoption by both the Council and the European Parliament. Denmark is not participating in proposed measure.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that between 2 and 5 per cent of global GDP is laundered each year, a figure that equates to between €715bn and €1.87trn ($769bn to $2trn) each year.

In an example of the power of POC legislation, two people in the UK who were sentenced for importing and distributing counterfeit goods were recently issued confiscation orders with a combined total of £269,000, and will have to pay up or have prison sentences more than doubled.