On July 13, 2018, it came into force completely. NEW Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Law. The purpose of the new legislation is to bring domestic law in line with EU regulations. Entrepreneurs, busy at the time adjusting to RODO, may not have noticed the changes and obligations imposed on them by the new law.
1 New Obligated Entities:
A. entrepreneurs who:
- Provide services including the formation and resale of companies;
- serve or enable another person to serve as a member of the company's board of directors or a similar function in the company;
- rent to other entrepreneurs (especially companies) either the headquarters or the registered address itself (both landlords and so-called virtual offices);
- act or enable another person to act as trustee of the trust.
B. currency exchange offices;
C. entrepreneurs providing safe deposit boxes;
D. loan companies.
Interestingly, in an uninformed way, the scope of the laws can be huge especially because of the coverage:
- entities that rent their headquarters / office / virtual address to other entrepreneurs. The ambiguity of this regulation leads to the thesis that it's not only about the owners of office buildings / shopping malls but also about the companies which casually rent the vacant premises which they have in their own premises;
- entrepreneurs to the extent that they accept or make payments for goods in cash with a value equal to or exceeding the equivalent of EUR 10,000, regardless of whether the transaction is carried out as a single operation or several operations that appear to be interrelated.
Regardless of the new entities, the law also covers entities that were also previously obliged to prevent money laundering: banks, financial institutions, SKOKI, national payment institutions, investment companies, insurance brokers, real estate brokers, notaries, attorneys, legal advisors, tax advisors, auditors, accounting firms, some associations.
2. the institution of trusts is defined
In order to properly implement EU regulations, the Polish legislator introduced a definition of the institution of trust, which is a novelty in Polish law.
3 Obligations of entities covered by the Law:
Obligated entities must do the following:
- Make own risk assessment, no later than within 6 months from the date of entry into force of the Law (i.e., by 13.01.2019), in paper or electronic form, and update it at least every 2 years;
- Analyze the transactions carried out on an ongoing basis in order to detect suspicious transactions among them, that is, those "that may indicate their connection to the crime of money laundering or terrorist financing and unusual transactions."
- Apply financial security measures to its customers;
- Identify money laundering and terrorist financing risks and assess their level;
- Document the identified risks;
- Put in place an internal procedure for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing that defines the applicable rules of conduct - including, but not limited to, actions taken to mitigate, identify and manage risks, measures used to manage risks, rules for applying financial security measures, rules for retaining documents and information;
- Introduce an internal whistleblowing procedure (i.e., a procedure for so-called whistleblowers).
4 An open Central Register of Real Beneficiaries will be established.
5 Penalties for violations of the Law:
Administrative penalties such as:
- Publication of information about the obligated institution and the extent of its violation in the BIP on the website of the office of the minister responsible for public finance;
- An order to stop the obligated institution from undertaking certain activities;
- Revocation of a permit or license;
- Prohibition for the person responsible for the violation to perform the duties of a managerial position - for no more than 1 year;
- Monetary penalties - the maximum value of the penalty regulated by the law is €5,000,000 or 10% of the turnover shown in the last approved financial statements for the financial year.
Failure to comply with the new law is not inferior in effect to the provisions of RODO, and yet the law has passed without much echo.
