Using financial information for preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting criminal offences

SUMMARY OF:

Directive (EU) 2019/1153 on rules facilitating the use of financial and other information for the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of certain criminal offences

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE DIRECTIVE?

It aims to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other serious offences, through:

easier access to bank account information by national authorities, including asset recovery offices;
better cooperation between law enforcement authorities and financial intelligence units (FIUs);
facilitating the exchange of information with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).

KEY POINTS

Power to access and search bank accounts

Each European Union (EU) Member State must ensure that designated authorities responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes have the power to directly and immediately access and search bank account information, in order to prevent, detect, investigate or prosecute serious criminal offences, including tracing and freezing assets.

In order to ensure a high level of data protection, access and searches are carried out only on a case-by-case basis by staff who:

have high integrity and are appropriately skilled;
are specifically designated and authorised for the tasks;
maintain high standards of confidentiality and data protection.

Moreover, logs of searches are kept and regularly checked by data protection officers.

Information sharing

Member States must ensure that (on a case-by-case basis, and to prevent, detect and combat money laundering, associated crimes and terrorist financing):

their national FIU cooperates with the designated law enforcement authorities and responds in a timely manner to requests for information or analysis;
designated authorities respond to requests for law enforcement information made by the national FIU in a timely manner;
FIUs from different Member States exchange financial information or analysis in exceptional and urgent cases;
designated law enforcement authorities exchange financial information or analysis obtained from their national FIU on request;
their law enforcement authorities and FIU may reply to requests from Europol for bank account information or financial analyses.

All these exchanges of information must respect the national procedural safeguards and be in line with the role and responsibilities of the different authorities, including the autonomy of FIUs to disseminate their analyses.

Requests and responses are transmitted using dedicated secure electronic communications ensuring a high level of data security.

Processing personal data

Processing personal data revealing a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or data on health, sex life or sexual orientation is only allowed subject to appropriate safeguards for the person’s rights and freedoms, in accordance with the applicable data protection rules.
Only trained and specifically authorised staff may access and process the data discussed above, under the guidance of the data protection officer.

Monitoring and evaluation

Member States must maintain statistics to review how effective their systems are in combating serious criminal offences.

By 2 August 2024, and every 3 years after that, the European Commission will draw up a report on the implementation of this directive to be submitted to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The report will be made public.

The directive repeals Council Decision 2000/642/JHA.

FROM WHEN DO THE RULES APPLY?

The directive had to be transposed into national law by 1 August 2021. These rules have applied since 1 August 2021.

BACKGROUND

For further information, see:

Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (European Commission).

MAIN DOCUMENT

Directive (EU) 2019/1153 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 laying down rules facilitating the use of financial and other information for the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of certain criminal offences, and repealing Council Decision 2000/642/JHA (OJ L 186, 11.7.2019, pp. 122–137).