Financial regulation

The Council of Europe's body for preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism, MONEYVAL, has released a statement saying that Serbia has progressed in meeting recommendations in the area, but that it will remain under a regime of heightened supervision and that it is supposed to hand in a new progress report in December 2019.

The European Commission added Saudi Arabia, Panama, Nigeria and other jurisdictions to a blacklist of nations that pose a threat because of lax controls on terrorism financing and money laundering, the EU executive said on Feb. 13.

Representatives of Romania's Presidency at the EU Council and those of the European Parliament (EP) reached an informal agreement on Tuesday regarding a directive proposal establishing the norms facilitating authorities the access to enforce the financial information law, in view of preventing, uncovering and investigating certain offenses.

Greece's return to the markets on Tuesday has a twofold significance. On the one hand, it marks the first phase of the country's ability to borrow independently in the post-bailout era.

Corruption prosecutors in Athens have ordered 15 people to appear as suspects in connection to the forged medical reports used by a convicted embezzler and another convict to secure their release from prison in 2018.

The European Commission will warn that programs in some EU countries that allow rich foreigners to buy citizenship or residence can help organized crime groups from outside the EU to penetrate the bloc and increase the risk of money laundering, corruption and tax evasion, Reuters reported.
 

According to her, the NBS plans to introduce the new service as part of its instant payments solutions, launched last October.

"Customers will be able to make payments using Skype or visual identification," Tabakovic said, and added:

The chief of the Cyprus Association of Banks said Cypriot lenders are concerned that their adoption of some of the toughest anti-money-laundering regulations in the world has not been fully recognized abroad.

The Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (SFEE) has reacted to a Health Ministry proposal to change the calculation of the so-called "clawback."

The clawback is the amount that pharmaceutical companies have to return to the state when public spending on drugs exceeds the amount budgeted for.

European Union finance ministers are set to delay a reform of money laundering supervision at banks next week because they first want to assess recent alleged cases of financial crime at the bloc's lenders, an EU draft document shows.