Lawyers' Duties under the Draft EU Money Laundering Directive: Is Confidentiality a Thing of the Past?

Abstract

Directive 91/308/EEC has been hailed by many European Union commentators as an extraordinary advance in the cause of EU integration, not least because it is still one of the few Directives actually in force in the field of EU criminal law. From the point of view of money laundering control, the Directive has been the EU's main weapon in its endeavours to ensure that the liberalisation of the financial markets and the consequent freedom of capital movements ‘is not used for undesirable purposes, such as money laundering’. Notwithstanding the undoubtful success of the Directive to introduce a minimum level of money laundering control mechanisms in all 15 EU member states (some of which had not even criminalised money laundering before transposing the Directive), however, Directive 91/308/EEC is no longer considered an adequately progressive legislative text for the advancement of further money laundering prevention to a pace equal to the one currently in force both at the international level and within some of the EU member states. The legislative response of the EU to the need for increasingly progressive legislation has been the Draft Money Laundering Directive, which having been passed by the Council and the Parliament is in the final stages of becoming part of EU legislation.