Portugal soon must adopt new EC rules on bank transfers which intrude further into citizen’s lives.
The current €10,000 limit below which citizen’s bank account movements remain of no concern to the Bank of Portugal, is to be lowered to €1,000 in an EC rule that has used the twin excuses of ‘HSBC money laundering’ and ‘funding terrorism.’
Portugal’s banks now will have to record details of each transfer or deposit of over €1,000 and confirm the names and identification details of both parties involved.
The new regulations dictated by Brussels are binding on all member states, including Portugal, and must be in place within two years.
One of the excuses for this new intrusion into the private lives of all Europeans is the scandal involving HSBC, whose Swiss branch helped clients hide billions of euros, 220 of the account holders being Portuguese or linked to Portugal.
On adoption of the new regulations, which will create a rise in operating costs for all banks that inevitably will be passed on to their customers, transfer data will be monitored, logged, checked out and reported within ten days.
The new rules do not make clear the expected impact on money laundering or on the financing of international terrorism but Brussels did say that "in cases of financing terrorism the amounts are often small in order to be hardly detectable by the authorities."
Now the bar is set lower, transfers for nefarious activities will no doubt all be for €9,999 or less and Portugal's tax department will be delighted that this information soon will exist.
