New anti-money-laundering laws 

The new law redresses deficiencies in previous legislation established by the EC committee MONEYVAL. They also incorporate the third Money laundering Directive as well as recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force.

The new law contains new ‘Know Your Customer’ procedures for identifying clients and verifying their identity. These are now supervised by the financial intelligence unit and apply to:

• investment services brokers
• persons authorised to trade in receivables
• asset management service providers
• providers of services to corporations (including companies founding corporations on behalf of others, providing corporate seats or acting as statutory bodies)
• as well as financial and credit institutions, posts, couriers, auction houses, auditors, tax advisors, notaries and attorneys.

Each person subject to ‘Know Your Customer’ obligations must now:

• report certain types of suspicious transactions to financial intelligence units
• carry out customer due diligence (either basic, streamlined or enhanced depending on the level of risk that the proceeds of crime are being legitimised or terrorist activities are being financed, which are to be evaluated by reference to statutory criteria)
• carry out increased customer due diligence in transactions involving politically exposed persons
• archive and keep for five years all data and written documents obtained as part of the due diligence process, including all data on all transactions and written supporting evidence
• devise and update their own initiative programme by 31 December each year, the contents of which are specified in the legislation
• provide to the financial intelligence unit on request all data on transactions and persons who participated in the transactions
• face much higher penalties for breach of their obligations, reflecting the third Directive

Law: Act no. 297/2008 Coll.