Spain’s AML/CTF Supervisor
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The Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Financial Crimes
The Financial Intelligence Unit, the supervision authority in this matter, is the Commission for the Prevention of Money laundering and Financial Crimes ( Servicio Ejecutivo de la Comisión de Prevención del Blanqueo de Capitales e Infracciones Monetarias (Sepblac)), with powers to request information from the European Central Bank (ECB) and national regulators.
How to comply with AML/CFT regulations in Spain
As a designated service you need to ensure that you have an AML/CTF program in place.
There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all AML/CTF program. Each reporting entity is unique and faces its own set of money laundering and terrorism funding risks. You must design a program that is unique to your needs. This gives you the freedom to choose how to fulfill your responsibilities and to implement stronger and/or additional controls where required.
All AML/CFT Programs must be based on risk assessment. Risk assessment serves as the basis for your whole AML/CFT program. Your program must explicitly illustrate the relationships between identified risk and the procedures, policies and controls relating to that risk.
The main AML/ CFT regulations in Spain are Law 10/2010 28th April of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prevention and the Royal Decree 304/2014 5th May.
Under Spanish AML/ CFT regulations Obliged subjects must comply with:
- Know Your Customer Procedures - prior to the establishment of business relationships or the execution of operations, obligated subjects must recognise the beneficial owners and take necessary steps to verify their identities.
- Customer Due Diligence Procedures
- Enhanced Due Diligence Procedures - those business sectors, practices, goods, facilities, distribution or marketing networks, business relationships, customers, and operations that present a higher risk of money laundering or terrorist funding should be subjected to enhanced due diligence steps.
- Transaction Monitoring Procedures - obligated subjects must obtain information and conduct ongoing monitoring of the intended intent and essence of their business relationships with their customers, including a review of the operations carried out during that relationship.
- Reporting Suspicious Transactions
- Record Keeping
- Obligated subjects must appoint a delegate before Sepblac, who is a Spanish resident, who works in the company's administration or management and will be responsible for meeting the information obligations.
- Obligated subjects must create an Internal Control Body (OCI), which must include representatives from all of the obligated subject's business areas and will be responsible for enforcing the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing policies and procedures.
- Obligated subjects must sign a manual for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist funding that will be kept up to date and provide details on the internal control measures implemented. Sepblac will have access to the manual in order to carry out its supervision and inspection duties.
- Obligated subjects must take steps to ensure that their workers are aware of the provisions of AML Laws. To that end, they will approve an annual training programme on money laundering and terrorism funding prevention.
Reviewing and auditing your AML/CFT program
Obligated subjects are required to investigate with particular attention any incident or activity, regardless of its size, that may be linked to money laundering or terrorist funding by its design, and to write down the results of the investigation.
Operations that indicate an apparent lack of correspondence with the existence, volume of activity, or operating background of the clients would be communicated to the Commission's Executive Service, given that there is no fiscal, technical, or company excuse for the performance of operations in the special review above.
Communications will be sent out as soon as possible and will include the following information:
- A list of the natural or legal persons involved in the process, as well as the definition of their involvement.
- The known conduct of the natural or legal persons involved in the operation, as well as the relationship between the activity and the operation.
- A list of related party transactions and the dates to which they refer, including the nature of the transactions, the currency in which they are carried out, the number, the place or places where they are executed, the intention, and the payment or collection instruments used.
- The reporting subject's procedures obligated him or her to investigate the alleged activity.
- A statement of all circumstances from which the indication can be derived, such as the certainty of a connection to money laundering or terrorist funding, or the lack of economic, technical, or business rationale for carrying out the operation.
- Any other related data required by law for the prevention of money laundering or terrorist financing.
Obligated Subjects must provide the documents and information that the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Offenses or its support bodies need in order to exercise their powers.