On Thursday, 18 April 2013, Matheson hosted a client seminar to discuss the practical implications of recently published anti-money laundering legislative proposals:

  • the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) (Amendment) Bill 2013 (the "Bill"), and
  • A directive on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing (the "Fourth AML Directive")  

Our client briefing circulated in February 2013 summarised the key proposals as are contained in both the Bill and the Fourth AML Directive.

Joe Beashel, Partner and Head of Matheson's Regulatory Risk Management and Compliance Group, chaired the seminar with Brendan Nagle from the AML Policy section of the Central Bank of Ireland invited to attend as the guest speaker.

Mr Nagle spoke about the genesis of the Fourth AML Directive, which in effect transposes FATF requirements at a European level and predominantly focusing on emphasis and development in the proposal of the risk based approach – at firm level, at Member State level and at European level. 

Mr Nagle also discussed how the Central Bank proposed to change its approach to the supervision of AML, in particular that the intention was that supervision of AML would be undertaken by front line prudential supervisors and aligned with its PRISM system.  He confirmed that the intention is that there will be an increased "probing" into financial institutions AML policies by the Central Bank, with a Questionnaire to be circulated shortly to a subset of financial institutions and in which the Central Bank will seek to verify whether the minimum components of its Supervisory Framework have been put in place effectively.

The proposals to change the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 (the "Act") were then considered by Joe Beashel and the session ended with a questions and answers session. 

Certainly it seems that this is an area which will get much attention in 2013 from the Central Bank, which itself will be under pressure in light of the upcoming review of its supervision in the AML and Financial Sanctions area, by the IMF and IOSCO scheduled for 2013, and the FATF review, due to take place in 2014.

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