The Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Enterprise took advantage of the last Council of Ministers before August to present the draft of an important bill. The future regulation seeks to renew the system for preventing money laundering in a structural reform of the financial system.
What phase is it in? Public hearing, with allegations able to be submitted until the next September 30.
And from there? It must continue its processing within the Government to be approved as a bill and sent to Congress to begin its parliamentary processing.
What are its main novelties?
New anti-money laundering authority
The Government proposes to create the National Authority for Financial Integrity (ANIFI), an independent administrative authority arising from the transformation of the current FROB.
It will absorb the functions currently performed by Sepblac to integrate under one umbrella financial intelligence, supervision, inspection, sanctioning power, and control of international financial sanctions. In addition, the ANIFI will act as the sole interlocutor for Spain before the newly created European anti-money laundering authority (AMLA).
The new authority will not depend on the General State Budgets but will be financed through a fee imposed on obligated subjects that need administrative authorization to operate, mainly financial entities and gambling operators. The contribution will be calculated according to the operating expenses of the ANIFI, with a maximum cap of 1.5 million euros annually per subject.
What happens with the FROB?
By legally transforming into the ANIFI, the FROB abandons its current executive functions of resolving banks and investment service companies. These competencies will pass to the Bank of Spain and the CNMV, respectively. The Government's logic is to group the preventive and executive phases of a possible resolution under the same supervisory roof to avoid duplications and inefficiencies.
And the stakes in Caixabank?
The draft establishes that BFA Tenedora de Acciones, the company through which the State manages its stake in CaixaBank, will cease to depend on the FROB to be directly attached to the Ministry of Economy. This same company will also assume ownership of the shares of the Sareb, thus reorganizing the management of the state assets inherited from the financial crisis.
Football under control
Football agents are expressly included in the anti-money laundering radar, just like football clubs in their operations with investors, sponsors, and player transfers. That is to say, the club's daily activity will not be subjected to the anti-money laundering regime, but exclusively those economic flows considered sensitive.
Who is behind a company
Companies and equivalent legal structures will be required to maintain adequate, accurate, and permanently updated information about who exercises their real control. In this ecosystem, the Central Register of Real Ownership assumes greater capacity for control, inspection, and sanction. The text also regulates access to this sensitive information, setting a fee of 2 euros per inquiry, reduced to 1 euro if access is automated "machine to machine".
New prohibitions and suitability requirements
Any person convicted of money laundering, financing terrorism, or other specific underlying crimes will be prohibited from engaging in activities of obligated subjects and will not be able to hold management or administration positions until the cancellation periods of criminal records established in Article 136 of the Penal Code have elapsed. And if the conviction occurs when the person is already in office, the cessation will be automatic.
This restriction also extends to ownership: companies must ensure that convicted individuals cannot exercise, either directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the voting rights or control of the company.
The draft law requires that all obligated subjects, from large banks to independent professionals, formally identify themselves by designating a representative before the ANIFI. The goal is to create, for the first time, a true census with a clear point of contact for each obligated subject.