---

AMLA work ‘vital to EU stability’, says chair

The chair of Europe's new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) told an event in Dublin this week that its work was about more than disrupting criminal networks. 

Bruna Szego, told the European Anti-Financial Crime Summit in Dublin that tackling money-laundering and terrorist-financing was “vital to the economic and democratic stability of the EU”. 

“Money-laundering corrodes public trust, fuels organised crime, corruption, and tax evasion, and distorts fair competition,” she stated. 

‘Rigorous oversight’ 

The Frankfurt-based AMLA was set up under a package of new rules adopted last year by the EU, aimed at harmonising AML rules across the union. 

AMLA will have direct supervisory responsibilities for 40 of the EU’s biggest financial institutions from 2028. 

Szego told the event that these entities would face “rigorous, consistent oversight”. 

She said that the priority was to set up the authority’s operational foundations, adding that recruitment and IT were critical success factors for any institution. 

Non-financial entities 

Sezgo said that the body had to stay alert to emerging trends in the financial and criminal industries, adding that AMLA hoped to become a “front-runner” in the use of secure and efficient digital tools. 

The AMLA chair also warned that the application of the new rules to non-financial entities was likely to require a re-organisation of supervisory frameworks in some member states. 

She called on national authorities to begin raising awareness among non-financial firms about their responsibilities under the new rules. 

The AML rules have been extended to include football clubs and agents, crowdfunding service providers, mortgage-credit intermediaries and consumer-credit providers, as well as operators of investor-residence schemes, and traders in high-value goods.