My Orchids. Phalaenopsis "Third Eye". Photo: ET
From a Luxembourg point of view, though the
information dates back to June, this is very timely information from “The FCPA
Blog”. (FCPA is the US anti-corruption law). It shows the irrelevance and futility of some Luxembourg meandering in writing up an ethics code for members of the government, elected officials known
in FCPA as PEPs, and civil servants.
That meandering has brought us some
black eye in the past, as for instance complying with Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recommendations several years ago, where Luxembourg was found in a review to
only comply fully with 1 recommendation out of 48 at the time!
Another example is that Luxembourg law on preventing money laundering got just one critical word smuggled into the European Directive’s text: as a professional, you have to willfully break the law, meaning actively launder or help laundering money,as opposed to being willfully blind to money laundering. If you don’t look, you don’t see, and that is fine!! Recent prosecutions by Luxembourg’s FIU failed based on that blatant obstacle and the launderers walked.
Another example is that Luxembourg law on preventing money laundering got just one critical word smuggled into the European Directive’s text: as a professional, you have to willfully break the law, meaning actively launder or help laundering money,as opposed to being willfully blind to money laundering. If you don’t look, you don’t see, and that is fine!! Recent prosecutions by Luxembourg’s FIU failed based on that blatant obstacle and the launderers walked.
Hence my conclusion that if a Luxembourg code of ethics
has no teeth and turns out to be merely a recommendation, foreign law with
extraterritorial provisions such as FCPA, or OFAC, and UK Bribery Act will take
care of the obvious shortcomings.
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