August 4 2016
Banks are reporting significantly more attempts at money laundering. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) says that during the first half of this year, the number of such notifications from banks rose by more than half compared to the same period of last year. The central criminal police said on Thursday that the sharp rise has partly come about because banks are now paying more attention to combating crime.
Altogether last year, the NBI’s Financial Intelligence Unit investigated nearly 38,000 reports of shady monetary transactions. The team works with the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, which in turn provides guidelines that have been adopted by the EU. During the first six months of this year, the unit intervened in 19 business transactions involving some 560,000 euros.