European Regulator Lists Crypto Next To Lawyers As AML Threat

The European regulator lists crypto right next to lawyers as an AML threat suggesting that there’s an insufficient level of compliance with these AML standards so let’s read more today in our cryptocurrency news.

The European regulator – Anti Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism watchdog listed monitoring the crypto sector along with the “gatekeeper” professionals like lawyers and accountants as priorities in the EU nation push to combat money laundering. In the annual reports, MONEYVAL called upon EU jurisdictions to assess complaince with international standards and implement strict regulatory policies to battle moeny laundering facilitated by crypto assets. The chief of MONEYVAL Elzbieta Frankow cited the Pandora PApers as an example of how the professionals are serving as gatekeepers and can aid the rich and corrupt to launder money so she also claimed that the popularity of crypto assets for money laundering is increasing:

“A newer money laundering trend is related to the emerging virtual assets sector, the increasing global use of cryptocurrencies, and other components of the rapidly evolving ecosystem of so-called “decentralized finance” (DeFi).”

MONEYVAL is an AML oversight body of the council of Europe and spends in 47 EU Jurisdictions the task force is responsible for reviewing the policy changes that influence the national legislative reforms. The report concluded that the median level of compliance with the FATF standards is below the needed threshold among the supervised jurisdictions and 18 out of the 22 jurisdictions evaluated showed an insufficient level of complaince with the AML standards. The EU watchdog will conduct a new study as well to examine money laundering trends that are related to virtual assets later this year.

While the regulatory authorities continue to raise concerns around the use of crypto for money laundering and other illicit activities, the data from Chainalysis suggests that less than 1% of the total circulating supply of crypto used illegal activities in 2021.

As recently reported, Privacy seems to be dropping down on the priority list of the ones designing the new digital euro, and experts warned that the design choices made can make some privacy harder to achieve. There hasn’t been any formal policy decision about whether to issue the euro in a new format but there’s strong momentum behind the idea. The Euro Finance minister will discuss the issue on Monday after a consultation due from the EU Commission as a new precursor to the laws.