Belgium – pole position

Permanent home to the European Commission and the Council of Europe and one residence of the European Parliament, Brussels is firmly at the forefront of the European Union project. It is not surprising therefore that Belgium took the lead in the continental fight against money laundering and implemented measures that went beyond the provisions of the first EU money laundering directive. However, says Sue Grossey, it will need to revisit its legislation if it is to comply with the second directive and secure this leadership.

Belgium and the FATF

Belgium has not been evaluated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for five years. In its annual report of July 1997, the FATF commented that “overall, the system put in place by the Belgian authorities is extremely coherent and very effective”. Belgium is known as a producer of synthetic drugs, and a transit point for both US-bound ecstasy and Europe-bound cocaine, heroin, hashish and marijuana, and indeed the FATF noted that “most of the money laundering cases detected in Belgium are related to the drugs traffic, principally with its neighbouring countries”. Belgium tackled the money laundering problem fairly early, its first anti-money laundering legislation was passed in July 1990, and earned praise from the FATF for having a “wide” money laundering offence that “covers pecuniary advantages derived from any criminal offence”. Along with FinCEN in the US, the Belgian FIU – the Cellule de Traitement des Informations Financières (Financial Intelligence Processing Unit) or CTIF-CFI – founded the Egmont Group of FIUs in 1995.