On April 05, 2022 the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act (ZPPDFT-2) (Official Gazette of Republic of Slovenia, No. 48/22) entered into force, replacing the old one adopted in 2016. The new Act incorporates into Slovenia's legislation three European directives, with incorporation of which our country has already been late and has therefore received a formal notice from European Commission.
Below are outlined some of the main highlights and changes to the Act.
The provisions of Directive (EU) 2019/1153, which lay down rules to facilitite the use of financial and other information for the purpose of preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting certain criminal offenses (availability of information to Europol), have been incorporated into the Act. Furthermore, Directive (EU) 2019/2177 on taking up and pursuit of the activities of insurance and reinsurance (amendments to Directive 2009/128/ES), on markets in financial instruments (amendments to Directive 2014/65/EU) and on prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing (amendments to Directive (EU) 2015/849) has been incorporated into Slovenia's legislation. At the same time the implementation of Regulation (EU) 2018/1672 on the control of cash entering and leaving the Union is further regulated.
The Act includes the harmonization of the category of obliged persons that are providing services related to virtual currencies with the recommendations of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) and at the same time amended rules regarding data obtained for the register of virtual currency service providers (including exchanges between one or more types of virtual currencies, the transfer of virtual currencies between different accounts or addresses and between different custodian wallets owned by the same legal or natural person and the storage or management of virtual currencies for third parties).
The Act introduces a new, unregulated customer due diligence without personal presence in case of a low risk for money laundering or terrorist financing (i.e. non-face-to-face, which applies as an exception to the principle of performing due diligence in person).
Novelties have also been introduced regarding identification. The Act loosens the requirements and conditions related to video-electronic identification and expands the possibilities of using this method for verifying the identity. At the same time, the possibility is introduced to allow, under certain conditions, also other secure remote-controlled or electronic identification procedures.
The new Act shortened the deadline for submitting data, information and documentation to the Office for Money laundering Prevention upon request to the obliged persons to submit data on suspicious transactions, persons, property or assets (from the previous 15 days) to only 5 working days.
Furthermore, the Act also supplements the authority of the Office for Money Laundering Prevention for the purposes of effective supervision over the implementation of obligations of business entities regarding determining beneficial owners and entering this data in the Register of beneficial owners. Last but not least, the Act adjusts the amounts of fines according to the economic power of the entity, while the lower limit of the range of fines regarding general offences that apply to all obliged persons has also been reduced.
