For the purpose of money laundering, the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) will in the future keep a register of remittance users and a register of safes.
Pursuant to the Law on Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, these authorizations are granted by the Central Bank, and the registration work begins from June 1, 2020. Meanwhile, NBS has adopted decisions governing the manner of keeping these registers, the manner and deadlines for submitting data to these registers, as well as how to access this information.
“All banks and remittance payment providers are required to meet all the necessary technical requirements to submit data to these registers by April 15, 2020, and to notify the NBS thereof. This will not be a problem for them, nor will they require additional costs, bearing in mind that these are surveillance entities that already have secure communication channels with the NBS to deliver large numbers of data and reports, and which meet the highest standards of information security”, they say in the Central Bank.
The aim of establishing unique registers of remittances and safes is to improve the efficiency of the systems for preventing and detecting money laundering and terrorist financing by enabling the competent authorities in that system (prosecutors, courts, police and the Office for the Prevention of Money Laundering) to quickly and reliably access data on users of safes and to persons performing payment transactions without opening a payment account, since the data will now be kept centralized and will be regularly submitted and updated.
In accordance with international FATF standards and national risk assessment, cash transactions generally carry higher risks, and given the application of modern technologies and the speed of payment transactions in international traffic, it is necessary to create databases that will allow competent and efficient access to legal cases.
All payment service providers of remittance payment services – banks and payment institutions providing this service, as well as the Post of Serbia – have an obligation to regularly submit data to the register of users of remittance.
“Please note that this register will only keep records of users of the remittance payment service, which is a payment service where funds are paid to the recipient in cash and not through a payment account, which is at the moment the most widely used service provides cross-border transactions through global money transfer services such as Western Union, Moneygram, or RIA, so the information in this registry will apply to users of this payment service, whether they receive or send funds, but not citizens who receive payments from banks from abroad on pensions and wages, social assistance”, the NBS said.
The central bank also added that the registers will keep records of users of remittances, but not of specific monetary transactions and the amounts of those transactions. Data from the Single Registry of Remittance Beneficiaries will not be publicly available, but will be subject to the provisions of the Law on Payment Services relating to professional secrecy and the provisions of the regulations governing the protection of personal data, B92 reports.
