Law against Money Laundering Amended

At the last session of the outgoing Parliament, lawmakers passed today amendments to the law against money laundering, which was adopted by the Parliament last March.

The law considers creation of a Financial Monitoring Service (FMS). According to the amendment, financial institutions will have to inform the FMS about every transaction, which exceeds 30 thousand Lari (approximately $13,600).

Initially the law considered monitoring of the transactions, which exceeded 20,000 Lari.

The Financial Monitoring Service has analytical functions and will not be a prosecuting body. The Service will recommend the law enforcers to probe those financial transactions, which the FMS regards as suspicious.

The International Monetary Fund has recently recommended Georgian authorities to make anti-money laundering legislation “fully effective.