Cyprus, Portugal among states rebuked by EU over delays in money-laundering reforms

Legal warnings have been sent to Cyprus, Portugal, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain over delays in turning anti-money laundering rules into national laws, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
The 27 EU states adopted the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive in 2018 and had to implement the rules to counter dirty-money risks in a wide range of sectors, including cryptocurrency exchanges, prepaid cards and shell companies, by 10 January 2020.
The time of the Commission’s letters of formal notice coincided with the publication of a report by the Council’s of Europe anti-money laundering body MONEYVAL that assessed the effectiveness of Cyprus’s anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) system.
MONEYVAL called on the Cypriot authorities to pursue more aggressively money laundering from criminal proceeds generated outside of Cyprus, and take a more proactive approach to the freezing and confiscation of foreign proceeds.