New changes made to money laundering law

TIRANA, September 22 – Government has proposed some changes to the money laundering and terrorism financing law obliging commercial banks and other non-banking financial institutions operating in Albania to declare all their customers’ bank accounts to the Directorate General of Money Laundering Prevention.
Under the new changes all banks will have to periodically report data on their customers to the money laundering directorate despite the amount in their customers’ accounts.
The current law obliges banks to report only accounts or transaction over 1.5 million lek (some 15,000 dollars). Courts and prosecutor’s offices have also been included in the list of institutions which should report suspected cases along with the existing tax, real estate, customs offices and NGOs.
The changes also foresee the establishment of a special unit to investigate suspected cases of terrorism financing at the money laundering directorate.
Albania made progress in identifying vulnerabilities at land and sea borders in 2009, but the government and police forces continued to face challenges to enforce border security fully and to combat organized crime and corruption, said a recently released US Department of State report on terrorism.
Albania froze bank accounts related to money laundering and terrorist financing, and aggressively worked with the United States and other countries to combat terrorism.
As of October 2009, the Ministry of Finance stated it maintained asset freezes against six individuals and 14 foundations and companies on the UNSCR 1267 list. No new assets were frozen this year under Albania’s Terrorist Financing Freeze law. Despite this, the effectiveness of the government’s counterterrorist financing effort was undermined by a lack of data-processing infrastructure and an inadequate capability to track and manage cases properly, said the report.