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Brussels, 26 February 1998
EUROPE's banks have vowed to fight any move to widen existing EU rules which would force them to denounce suspected tax evasion by customers.
The European Banking Federation claims Union officials are contemplating broadening the scope of an existing directive which compels banks to alert national authorities to evidence of the laundering of proceeds from drug dealing, to cover suspected fiscal fraud by customers.
Its members' hostility to the idea stems from their belief that it would not work in practice, and would merely serve to damage their relationship with customers.
A spokeswoman for Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti confirmed this week that a report due out next month on the workings of the current directive was likely to suggest extending the obligation to declare suspicious transactions to other professions, such as lawyers.
She added that there was “big pressure” from member states and the European Parliament to extend the scope of the directive to bring in other crimes, but stressed that the Commission had not taken any decision.
Pressure for a European initiative follows tentative national moves to use banks to clamp down on fiscal fraud.
Brussels, 19 February 1998
THE EU police agency Europol will not be fully operational before the end of the century even if the political obstacles now hampering its work are removed.
The agency's chief Juergen Storbeck admitted this week that the vast computer database which will form the centrepiece of the agency's crime-fighting capacity would not be fully online before the year 2000 because of technical problems.
Storbeck said law enforcement agencies would therefore not be able to gain instant and automatic access to personal information held in the system's archives before the turn of the century. Until then, they will have to retrieve the information they need through personnel at the organisation's headquarters in The Hague.
“The database will be a semi-automatic system until the year 2000,” Storbeck told European Voice, adding: “We will have everything ready after then.”
Europol should have been up and running almost a year ago, but national parliaments have taken far longer than anticipated to ratify the convention which will allow the agency to carry out all the tasks allotted to it.
The latest delay is a major setback for Europol as this rapid access to data is precisely what EU member states want to enable them to tackle cross-border crime more effectively.
