Once the reform of the Directive on the prevention of the use of the financial system for money laundering or the financing of terrorism, which this week has been approved by the European Parliament and now must be ratified by the Council of Ministers of The twenty-eight will include providers of virtual currency or cryptocurrency exchange services, such as bitcoin, for currencies backed by states and central banks.
Also, it will affect providers of custody services of electronic purses in the obligation to register operations and report those that they consider suspicious, as banks do.
These platforms and service providers must register, as do foreign exchange companies and check cashing offices, as well as fiduciary or business service providers. In the case of prepaid cards, the amount from which their holders must be identified is reduced, from the current 250 euros to 150 euros.
Brussels believes that surveillance would provide a balanced and proportionate approach that safeguards technical advances and the high level of transparency achieved in the field of alternative financing and social entrepreneurship.
The standard defines virtual currencies as "digital representation of value not issued or guaranteed by a central bank or by a public authority, not necessarily associated with a legally established currency, which does not have the legal status of currency or money, but accepted by individuals or legal entities as a means of exchange and that can be transferred, stored and negotiated by electronic means ".
An incomplete solution
It is defined as a provider of custody of electronic wallets to those who provide services for the safeguarding of private cryptographic keys on behalf of their clients, for the possession, storage and transfer of virtual currencies.
The text of the future standard recognizes that "the anonymity of virtual currencies allows their possible misuse for criminal purposes." The inclusion of virtual currency exchange service providers by fiduciary currencies and the providers of custody services Electronic wallets will not fully resolve the issue of anonymity associated with transactions with virtual currencies, by maintaining anonymity in much of the virtual currency environment, since users can carry out transactions outside of such service providers. "
Therefore, it is regulated that in order to combat the risks of this anonymity, the national Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) must be able to obtain information that allows them to associate the addresses of the virtual currencies with the identity of the owner of the virtual currency. In addition, the possibility that users voluntarily make a self-declaration to the designated authorities should be further analyzed.
In addition, although virtual currencies can often be used as a means of payment, they could also be used for other purposes and find wider applications, such as means of exchange, investment, reserve value products or use in online casinos. The purpose of the Directive is to cover all possible uses of virtual currencies.
In the case of operations involving countries considered to be at high risk for money laundering and for business relations or transactions, Member States shall require the obligated entities to apply enhanced due diligence measures with respect to the client in order to manage and mitigate those risks. Each Member State will therefore determine at national level the type of enhanced measures of due diligence that it should apply in relation to high-risk third countries.
