Moldovan banks may ask clients for more personal data

A system monitoring clients, to be used by all the Moldovan commercial banks, will soon be developed to counteract money laundering through illicit transactions. Any legal or natural entity will have to provide the bank with more personal data about their activities, Info-Prim Neo reports. So that Moldova faces up money laundering terror financing, it is necessary that the banks and other non-banking financial entities closely cooperate with the law-enforcement bodies, said Vitalie Verebceanu, the deputy chief of the Anti-Corruption Center (ECCCC), at a seminar on Friday . According to the vice governor of the National Bank, Ion Prodan, it is necessary that every bank knows its client and has access to the necessary information on the transactions operated by either a company, or an ordinary citizen. Prodan says a well-thought banking monitoring system is necessary to supervise all the clients and the operations they perform . He says in the future every legal entity will have to supply the bank with information including about its political affiliation, this provision being stipulated in European recommendations Moldova should take into account. “Sometimes the political affiliation can make the bank realize if a client may have criminal relations or if it operates illicit transactions,” the vice governor said. The law on combating and preventing money laundering and financing terror, in force since later last year, provides for that every bank may offer the ECCCC information about the activity of some client. In case the bank has doubts as to the transactions operated by a company, it can notify the ECCCC in order to start legal proceedings to discover the sources or the method of gaining money. The deputy chief of the ECCCC says the issue of criminal incomes has an international character. According to him, practically every week in the world, economic infractions to finance terror acts are committed. 4 cases of money laundering were tracked in Moldova last year. Now they dealt with, said Vitalie Verebceanu,declining to yield more details. Aurica Doina, the deputy chairwoman of the Financial Market National Commission (FMNC), has said joining the institutional potential and instituting the mechanism combating money laundering or the illicit incomes is extremely important for Moldova, as it will lead to enhancing the awareness of financial entities as to their duties. The seminar on money laundering in the banking sector has been organized by the Project of the Council of Europe and the European Commission against corruption, money laundering and terror financing – MOLICO, in cooperation with Moldova's Central Bank, the ECCCC and the FMNC.