The European Union's executive branch outlined a plan Wednesday to strengthen the role of the European Banking Authority, or EBA, in ensuring national regulators promptly and effectively take action against financial institutions that violate anti-money laundering rules.
EU officials took the unprecedented step Thursday of directly ordering a member state's financial regulator to improve its supervision of banks for anti-money laundering purposes.
European officials published a draft agreement Tuesday to exchange anti-money laundering and other banking data with national authorities amid revelations that billions of dollars in suspicious funds flowed through lenders in Denmark, Malta and other EU nations in recent years.
EU officials want prudential regulators to play a greater role in ensuring effective anti-money laundering supervision of financial institutions following a series of scandals in which European banks allegedly laundered billions of dollars for financial criminals.