Читать книгу Anti-Money Laundering State Mechanisms - Michele Sciurba - Страница 16

The 4th AMLD has a clear focus on tax crimes, includes violations concerning both direct and indirect taxes, and is in line with the revised FATF Recommendations of 2012.⁷⁸ On a critical note, it is highly problematic that the member states’ definitions of tax offences differ significantly, as this lack of tax offence harmonisation demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the common approach to tax evasion within the EU.⁷⁹ To illustrate this issue, tax evasion in Germany, in contrast to Holland, is not a predicate crime for money laundering. In Germany and Austria, tax evasion is not a serious crime in the respective penal code. On the basis of the principle of subsidiarity, tax offences cannot be classified as a serious crime and predicate offence for money laundering within the EU.⁸⁰

Directly after the GFC, the EU Commission Directorate-General for Home Affairs created the Economic and Legal Effectiveness of Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorist Financing Policy (ECOLEF) project. ECOLEF has expressed their concern in one of its studies on the effectiveness of AML policy and possible shortcomings, because the implementation of the 4th AMLD has exceeded the envisioned two-year period in a number of member states.⁸¹ One reason for this delay is that the FATF Guidelines 2013⁸², which are incorporated in the Directive, oblige states to carry out individual ML, TF and tax evasion related risk assessments, but neither describe how these assessments should be made nor define their methodology. As a consequence, each member state must first develop its own qualitative criteria to meet the requirements of implementation. This, in turn, highlights the absence of a harmonised risk assessment methodology, which ultimately compromises the ability to compare the results of the data collected in these assessments.⁸³