site.btaMeasures against Terrorist Financing Act Amended Conclusively

Bulgaria's Parliament on Wednesday passed conclusively Government-proposed revisions to the Measures Against the Financing of Terrorism Act.

Under the amendments, the Registry Agency will make it technologically possible to restrict access to entered circumstances on beneficial owners in the Commercial Register, the Register of Non-Profit Legal Persons, and the BULSTAT Register.

The revisions will have a favourable impact on the effectiveness of the application of the law and will contribute to upgrading compliance of money-laundering and terrorist-financing prevention legislation with the requirements and recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Council of Ministers argued. The enactment of the amending law also marks substantial progress in the implementation of the FATF Action Plan for Bulgaria, which is a necessary condition for shortening the period in which this country is on, and is ultimately removed from, the FATF "grey list" of countries that are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.

The amendments provide for new obligations of the entities subject to the Measures Against the Financing of Terrorism Act to apply measures against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and accessory obligations. The existing internal arrangements of the obliged persons, made to meet the requirements of preventive legislation, may be used to that end.

The Minister of Finance has six months from the entry into force of the amending law to bring a relevant ordinance under the Measures Against Money Laundering Act into conformity with it.

Parliament also resolved on increasing the sanctions for violations of the law. Unless the act constitutes a criminal offence, a natural person will be liable to a maximum fine of BGN 15,000 (up from BGN 10,000 so far), and a legal person or merchant will be punishable by a pecuniary penalty of BGN 75,000 (up from BGN 50,000 so far). If the offender is subject to the Measures Against Money Laundering Act, the sanction will be BGN 150,000.

"The amendments to the Measures Against the Financing of Terrorism Act are the first of three packages of legislative revisions that will result in Bulgaria's removal from the FATF 'grey list'," said Justice Minister Georgi Georgiev. The second package consist of draft amendments to the Penal Code (including revisions to the Criminal Procedure Code and the Administrative Violations and Sanctions Act), which have already reached Parliament. The third package concerns criminal assets forfeiture, Georgiev added.