Legislation up for debate in Germany would prompt banks to review and possibly reconsider their correspondent ties with financial institutions in several EU nations, including Malta, Latvia and Cyprus, sources told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. Germany, like the 27 other members of the EU, must implement the bloc's Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive by January 2020. But 5AMLD only requires enhanced checks on correspondents based outside the bloc, whereas the German bill would extend those expectations to cover correspondents in EU nations viewed as posing a "heightened risk" of financial crime. The proposal, which lawmakers plan to discuss Friday, would mark a significant...
Submissions of suspicious transaction reports, or STRs, to the German government rose nearly 30 percent from 2017 to 2018, but real estate brokers, notaries, and other nonbank firms and professions remained poor contributors of financial intelligence.
Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority conducted 90 anti-money laundering related audits of firms outside of the normal examination cycle last year after launching just 44 such reviews in 2017, the regulator disclosed in a report Monday.
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