Author: Lucie Sýkorová, HlidaciPes.org
The new European agency AMLA, which will monitor money laundering, will be headed by Italian Bruna Szego. MEPs confirmed her selection by secret ballot this week. The agency will be based in Frankfurt, Germany, and its creation is described by European institutions as a milestone in the fight against the legalization of proceeds from crime.
The AMLA will start operating in early 2025 and will be fully functional by 2028. It will directly supervise the 40 most risky financial and credit institutions in the EU.
It will even have the power to take over the supervision of a financial or credit institution from a national supervisory authority in the event of serious breaches or if the national supervisory authority is unable to address the shortcomings.
According to experts, it is important that the agency will be led by a strong leader.
“In an environment where fines are typically equivalent to rounding errors in the annual budgets of large financial institutions, the AMLA will be under pressure to keep fines low. We should also expect resistance from member states if there is a conflict. We therefore hope that the EU authorities will elect a competent and strong chair who will never yield to interests that would undermine the AMLA’s mandate,” Transparency International said in July this year.
Money laundering is a major problem worldwide. According to a new Europol study, 86% of criminal networks in the EU use legal business structures to launder dirty money.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the volume of money laundering reaches 2 to 5% of global GDP each year. That is up to €1.87 trillion each year, according to Europol.
Primarily a political decision
The new head of the AMLA, Bruna Szego, will take office at the beginning of the year. She previously worked at the Italian central bank, Banca d’Italia, where she has led the fight against money laundering in recent years.
Her rivals in the final selection process were Jan Reinder De Carpentier from the Netherlands and Marcus Pleyer from Germany.
De Carpentier is vice-chair of the Single Resolution Board (SRB), an EU agency established in Brussels in 2015 as part of the reforms known as the Banking Union. He previously led the fight against money laundering at the Dutch central bank.
Pleyer is deputy director general of the German Federal Ministry of Finance and led the global anti-money laundering body, the Financial Action Task Force, from 2020 to 2022.
MEPs ultimately opted for Italian expert and lawyer Szego, even though they were not unanimous in their support for her. Czech MEPs admitted that gender and the origin of the candidates also played a role in the selection.
“It would be problematic if a German were elected director of an agency based in Germany,” Luděk Niedermayer, MEP, vice-chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, who worked on the preparation of anti-money laundering laws in the previous term, told HlídacíPes.org.
“We had three candidates, and I had an informal meeting with all of them. The Dutch candidate had the advantage of having been involved in the establishment of the SRB, while the German candidate had international experience thanks to the FATF. I would perhaps have preferred the Dutch candidate, who has experience in establishing European institutions,” Niedermayer revealed.
“But all three were sufficiently qualified, so it was primarily a political decision,” he added.
According to him, the AMLA agency, led by Italian Szego, will function well.
“Bruna Szego struck me as technically capable. She may have less experience in terms of international cooperation and launching European institutions, but that’s what the executive director will be there for. There was no clear consensus within the EPP, but the majority of the group ultimately supported her,” added Niedermayer.
According to him, both the European Commission and Parliament have repeatedly made it clear that they consider this agency to be very important, so it will be under pressure to function effectively.
We need Cattani
Tomáš Zdechovský, a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), takes a more critical view of Bruna Szego’s election.
“The candidate who, in my opinion, was objectively the worst at the hearing won. I am against electing the heads of European agencies on the basis of gender or where they come from. The argument that Bruna Szego comes from Italy and therefore must understand money laundering because Italy has the most experience with it is insufficient for me. In my opinion, both candidates who stood against her were three classes better,” he told HlídacíPes.org.
According to him, Szego spoke too generally in her presentations. “She mentioned that she wants to increase analytical capacity, but she didn’t show any managerial skills, for example. When asked how the agency would cooperate with the EPPO, Europol, and national states, she spoke only in general terms about cooperation, but did not give any specific examples. In my opinion, she came across as rather naive.”
“In this position, we would need a strong personality who sets the vision, such as Cattani in the European Union. But Bruna Szego, with her manner and answers, did not present herself as a strong personality, and I did not hear much of a vision from her,” added Zdechovský.
He himself would prefer the German candidate. According to him, under Bruna Szego’s leadership, the AMLA will not be as strong as it could be.
Executive Director wanted
The position of AMLA Chair will be held for four years, but may be extended once. The salary exceeds €250,000 per year and is tax-free, according to Politico.
AMLA is expected to employ more than 430 people in total. By the end of 2025, it should hire approximately 120 experts in the following areas: anti-money laundering, legal services, budget, human resources, IT specialists, communication experts, etc.
Candidates for the position of executive director, whose salary will exceed €200,000 per year, can apply until January 21 next year. Middle management positions will be advertised from the first half of 2025.
The Anti-Money Laundering Agency (AMLA) was officially established by a regulation that came into force at the end of June. It is part of a package of measures that European politicians have been working on since 2021.
The AMLA will take over supervision of the banking sector from the European Banking Authority (EBA), which has been responsible for this activity until now. Since 2019, it has been based in Paris, where it moved from London after Brexit.
Other countries, including France, Spain, and Ireland, also competed for the seat of the authority but were unsuccessful.
