The anti-money laundering/countering financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) frameworks aim at preventing, investigating, and prosecuting ML/FT crimes through a system of measures implemented by multiple stakeholders. The Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism (CETS No. 198) is one of the most highly regarded and widely used international standard for such purposes.
At the same time, the AML/CFT regime provides for several contexts of processing of personal data, which are essentially based on public interest, setting out detailed obligations on data controllers. This extends to the processing of personal data by government authorities, which are legally mandated to combat ML/FT and are granted specific powers in this area and by private entities for the same public interest purposes and for their own business interests.
The purpose of these Guidelines is to provide orientation on how to integrate the requirements of Convention 108+ in the area of AML/CFT in order to provide for an appropriate level of data protection while facilitating transborder data flows, and to highlight certain areas in the AML/CFT context where data protection safeguards should be strengthened.
The Guidelines were adopted by the Committee of Convention 108 (T-PD) during its 44th plenary meeting in Strasbourg after an extensive consultation with various stakeholders, including the FATF secretariat as well and are now available for publication. Upon their adoption the T-PD thanked the members, experts and the Secretariat of the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism (MONEYVAL) for their close cooperation, and for their valuable contribution to the drafting of this document.
