A devilish new software programme soon will enable the Public Ministry, banks and insurers to investigate suspicious operations that may or may not be linked to ‘money laundering.’
Starting next year, Portugal’s prosecution service will have access in real time to bank accounts of those suspected of concealing or transferring funds for nefarious purposes.
The new measure is part of the development plan for the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DCIAP) and takes advantage of a new software tool that will enable the prosecutor, banks and insurers to look at activity. The software also will flag up suspicious bank transactions, something the Bank of Portugal currently is meant to do.
'Suspicious transactions' already are reported to the Attorney General's Office by many financial and non-financial bodies, but this process does not occur automatically which ‘slows things up’ according to DCIAP.
Currently bank transactions over €5,000 are deemed suspicious, but this figure is to be reduced to a risible €1,000 as from 2017, following the slavish adoption of a European directive whose purpose, ‘combating terrorist funding’, defies good sense and all reason.
The snooping into the private financial affairs of Portugal's citizens now seems to have gone too far but with its business and political leaders involved in fiscal fraud, money laundering and tax evasion, it is little wonder that these sorts of intrusive laws get passed and willingly adopted by a state obsessed with the micro-management of its residents' affairs.
One certain side-effect will be more cash circulating in the grey economy thus reducing the government's VAT income, corporate tax take and other income related to covert economic activity.
