On 28 November 2022, the Council of Europe’s Economic Crime and Cooperation Division (ECCD) organised in collaboration with the European Commission Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) and the Financial Intelligence Unit of Slovakia a workshop on ML/TF Risk Assessment of Legal Entities in Bratislava, Slovakia.
The workshop gathered attendees from the Ministry of Justice, the National Bank, the National Central Office of the Special Crimes (NCOSC), the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic. Furthermore, representatives of Bulgarian and Czech authorities, beneficiaries of Council of Europe projects in the framework of DG REFORM support efforts, contributed to a stronger focus on regional typologies and common challenges regarding the abuse of corporate entities and benefited from the practical advice on the assessment of risks associated with legal entities. Bulgaria and the Czech Republic were represented by experts from respectively the Financial Intelligence Unit within the State Agency for National Security (FID-SANS) and the Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic.
During the workshop, a presentation of the recently developed Council of Europe Guidelines for ML/TF Risk Assessment of Legal Entities was delivered and a fruitful discussion on its application with the participating national authorities took place. The different steps of assessment indicated by the Guidelines were discussed, including the scope and nature of risk of legal entities being misused for ML, the application of all FATF requirements for assessing those risks and the application of relevant definitions, the use of the data collection tools and the mitigation of the identified risks. In addition, the other half of the workshop was devoted to exchanging views and practical information on the state of play, challenges and major risks identified with regard to the misuse of legal entities by representatives of the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. The participants engaged actively in the different discussions and contributed to the brainstorming session on practices and potential issues in the collection of data.
The workshop enables the authorities to optimise their risk assessment processes by applying the Council of Europe Guidelines for risk assessment of legal entities in their own jurisdictions and the acquired skills will be deployed in updating their understanding of national risks and developing effective responses to those risks.
The workshop was organised within the framework of the Technical Support Instrument project “Enhancing the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering framework in Slovak Republic” funded by the European Commission Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.