Charles Walker – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charles Walker on 2016-03-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of its senior civil servants who will potentially fall under the provisions of the 4th EU Money Laundering Directive, 2015/849; and what assessment she has made of which of her Department’s agencies or other public bodies will potentially be classed as holding a prominent public function for the purposes of that directive.

Mr John Hayes

Under the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (4AMLD), which will be transposed into national law by June 2017, a politically exposed person is one who has been entrusted with a prominent public function domestically or by a foreign country. This would include some senior civil servants. The Government will be setting out its view in a consultation which will be published shortly.

The changes proposed under 4AMLD must not prevent any individual in this category from gaining or maintaining access to financial services. The Home Office and Treasury regularly raise these issues with financial institutions and the regulator, and we encourage financial institutions to take a proportionate risk-based approach when applying these measures.

To that end, following the Adjournment Debate on 20 January 2016 on this issue, along with the Economic Secretary to the Treasury I have recently met representatives of the banking sector to make clear concerns. The banks now clearly understand the importance of this issue and a way forward has been agreed. Should further problems arise we will re-emphasise what we expect.