04 Feb 2016

Jessica Parker comments on money laundering laws in Payments Compliance

The challenge of regulating payments in an age of terrorism has been brought into focus by this week’s EU announcement that fresh money laundering laws are to be altered before any national authority has a chance to implement them. PaymentsCompliance spoke with several experts in the field to discuss business ramifications, and how future events may again cause a rewriting of rules.

Financial crime specialist Jessica Parker, a partner at Corker Binning’s London practice, pointed to how the the enhanced due diligence required with regard to prepaid cards was prompted by the initial Paris attacks.

“Such a high profile incident is bound to galvanise legislators into action; reviewing whether they have provided law enforcement agencies sufficient powers to trace and respond,” she said.

“The fact that the directive is already subject to amendment so soon after being passed should come as no surprise.

“The challenge faced by legislators at domestic and European level is that they tend to react to rather than predict changing methodologies in financial crime.”

Read the full article in Payments Compliance here.