More important information obligations as a preventive measure in situations of suspected money laundering or terrorist financing

Abstract

The purpose of this publication is to analyze two information obligations, which have a preventive impact on security in the broad sense. Two examples have been chosen for a detailed presentation, which are included in the recently amended Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act of 1 March 2018. This Act introduced a number of new information obligations for several groups of entrepreneurs. As these tasks are unknown to Polish law or even innovative, they are also complicated for a number of reasons, therefore two presentations of information obligations will be made as part of the administrative and legal analysis. Taking into account these objectives, the article will thus fulfill the description of the two basic information obligations that arise from this act. First, it will concern the new register, which is the Central Register of Actual Beneficiaries, as well as the extremely restrictive arrangements to enforce the reliability of entries in that register. The second subject discussed herein will be the presentation of the so-called Institutions obliged to inform about the occurrence of a specific risk. A characteristic feature of the obligations for this group of entrepreneurs is that this task is extremely difficult to establish. In particular in detecting the risk situations indicated in the Act and further reporting this fact to the relevant authorities. The order of presentation was determined by the novelty of the CRBR, as well as the fact that it will cover a much larger number of entrepreneurs. Moreover, this register is open, therefore it may be useful for a number of addressed entrepreneurs. On this basis, it is reasonable to believe that CRBR, as a new highly reliable register, will also provide a number of benefits for every entrepreneur in terms of transparency of ownership in Poland. For these reasons, we are presenting here the view that a number of CRBR solutions are worth adapting more widely, especially to business law, after some time.