Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-280"
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"en.20010404.11.3-280"2
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"Mr President, I am afraid I am going to break the consensus so far. The rapporteur has worked hard and I am therefore particularly sorry to say that my Liberal Group cannot unfortunately support most of his amendments. It is time to match the rhetoric about fighting money laundering with tough action.
As someone who represents London, including the City of London, I am naturally supportive of financial services liberalisation. However, freedom of capital movements must not be exploited for undesirable purposes. Criminal money could give liberalisation a bad name. This means financial firms have an interest in making the safeguards work but so do other professionals such as accountants and lawyers who are vulnerable to being used as inadvertent conduits for dirty money. The European Parliament has itself made a strong call for the extension of a ten-year-old existing directive to cover non-financial activities and professions. As the money laundering defences of banks have strengthened, criminals have sought new ways of hiding their money. Therefore it is reasonable to call for other professionals to identify their clients properly and report suspicious transactions without narrowing too much the scope of the relevant activities. We cannot therefore follow Mr Lehne in his amendments on accountants and auditors.
Turning to lawyers, they rightly get special treatment. The obligations of the directive would only apply in respect of certain financial and company law activities. My Group believes that the safeguards for the lawyer-client relationship, which is absolutely crucial, is adequate in the Council common position. The lobbying of lawyers' organisations against this common position has been somewhat exaggerated. Therefore we, in the ELDR Group, will not be supporting the Lehne amendments because we are extremely keen not to weaken the rules. There are some of Mr Lehne's amendments which are entirely sensible and we will support them but, I am afraid, not the majority."@en1
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