The Criminal Justice (Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing) Bill 2009

The Main Purpose of the Bill is to:

•Identify and verify the identity of their customer and of any assets ultimate beneficial owner, and to monitor their business relationship with the customer; •Report suspicions of money laundering or terrorist financing to the public authorities, usually, the national financial intelligence unit; •Take supporting measures, such as ensuring proper training of the personnel and the establishment of appropriate internal preventive policies and procedures.

The 2009/Bill/Act will be applicable to Intermediaries – investment, mortgage and insurance and other investment/insurance businesses which are regulated by the Financial Regulator.  Going forward the term “Designated Body” will be replaced by the term “Designated persons”

The changes which the new Act will bring are:

•“Designated Persons” will be required to perform customer due diligence on a risk based approach. There will be 3 types of customer due diligence depending on the circumstances, (1) Simplified (2) Standard (3) Enhanced identification

•The following products are exempted from the requirements in relation to Customer Due Diligence: – Life Assurance policies with an Annual premium of not more than € 1000 …

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Financial Highlights / Lowlights of 2007

Last year was a market full of ‘surprises’ and here is my list:

1. Affecting my own livlihood the most was the credit crunch. It spread from the US to the Eurozone Australia and then on to Asia.

2. The sub-prime fiasco, and I don’t use the word ‘fiasco’ sparingly – on that note I would ask banks to stop inventing things like SIV’s because it was the inability to value them correctly and the subsequent failures of same which kick started the whole thing. The sub-prime mess hit everything from wall street to London, here, there, everywhere and it even raised rates for all new mortgages in Ireland because the Euribor sat at 6 year high and refuses to drop as far as the ECB had hoped with the latest cash injection, it went from almost 5% to (todays) 3 month money price of 4.64%…. are we getting value for our billions? Does it even matter any more? The fact of the matter is that the likes of Citibank should have its whole board resign and they should have …

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