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Slovenia adopts a new Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act

24/01/2017

On 20 October 2016, the Slovenian National Assembly adopted the new Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act (Zakon o preprečevanju pranja denarja in financiranja terorizma; ZPPDFT-1), which came into force on 19 November 2016. The new Act implements Directive (EU) 2015/849 in the Slovenian national legal system and follows international standards for money laundering prevention, especially the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) from 2012.

The key amendments that the new ZPPDFT-1 brings into the Slovenian legal system compared to the old Act are outlined below:

  • expansion of the list of reporting entities;
  • implementation of the so-called risk-based approach;
  • establishment of the Register of beneficial owners, operated by AJPES (Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Public Legal Records and Related Services), with all legal entities being required to identify their own beneficial owners within one year of ZPPDFT-1 becoming effective and register beneficial owners within 14 months of ZPPDFT-1 becoming effective;
  • exceptions to face-to-face identification: (i) expansion of the possibility of using measures of electronic identification to identify proxies and authorized representatives of legal persons and proxies, (ii) identification of a natural person without physical presence, by using video-electronic identification;
  • broader definition of politically exposed persons, including foreign politically exposed persons;
  • decreasing the threshold for reporting about cash transactions from EUR 30,000 to EUR 15,000;
  • mandatory customer due diligence for (i) occasional transactions transfer of funds exceeding EUR 1,000 and (ii) transactions exceeding EUR 2,000 by providers of gambling services, when paying out winnings, receiving betting payments  or both;
  • enhancing the powers of the Office for Money Laundering Prevention by granting it inspection powers;
  • supervision: (i) deadline for disclosing information and submitting documentation to the Office for Money Laundering Prevention has been changed from 15 to 8 days, (ii) if a reporting entity does not allow the inspector to enter its premises, access the business books or other documentation or obstructs the inspector in another manner, the inspector may enter against their will, with the help of the police, (iii) competent authorities shall publish information about the imposed measures of supervision and sanctions and reveal the offences and identity the persons responsible on their official websites;
  • the list of most serious offences has been amended with a number of new offences; some offences are sanctioned more severely in comparison with the old Act.

Written by Tajda Vrhovec