From December 1st, all transfers equal to or greater than €15,000 to an offshore account will be reported by the bank to the Bank of Portugal.
This rule results from notice No. 8/2016 from of the banking supervisor resulting from existing legislation under the Legal Regime of Credit Institutions and Financial Companies (RGICSF).
The RGICSF regime already covers the reporting of transactions with tax havens, but it did not specify which transactions were targeted. From now on, transactions involving amounts equal to or greater than €15,000 must be reported to the banking regulator.
The notice was published in the Official Gazette on September 30th which stated that the reporting of transfers are mandatory that "present a unit value equal or superior to €15,000 " or that "integrate a set of operations of an aggregate value equal to or greater than €15,000 which appear to be related to each other. "
This means that if the client of a bank requests the transfer of €15,000 or more to an account of a person domiciled in an offshore jurisdiction, the issuing bank will have to keep a record of the transaction for five years, as well as communicate it to the Bank of Portugal.
If three transfers of €5,000 are made, within a few days, the issuing bank will have to register these transactions for five years and report them to the central bank.
Banks must report, on a quarterly basis, all such operations. The first transmission of information will take place on January 31, 2017.
For now, there are 101 tax havens listed including the Cayman Islands, Barbados, Liechtenstein, the Maldives and San Marino.
