Scarred with a reputation for being one of the European Union’s most corrupt countries, Greece – along with even more-corrupt Romania – have been referred to the European Court for not adopting the bloc’s stricter directive against money laundering.

All 28 EU member-states had a deadline of June 26 to implement the directive against the legalization of revenues from illegal activities into national legislation, but Greece failed to do so, although a bill has been sent to the parliamentary Committee for Financial Affairs.

The Greek government has been asked to strengthen the risk assessment obligation for banks, lawyers and accountants; to set clear transparency requirements about beneficial ownership for companies; to facilitate cooperation and exchange of information between financial intelligence units from different member-states to identify and follow suspicious transfers of money to prevent and detect money laundering or terrorist financing; to establish a coherent policy toward non-EU countries that have deficient anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing rules; and to reinforcing the sanctioning powers of competent authorities, said Kathimerini.

The European Commission has proposed another directive of safeguards for financial flows from high-risk third countries with growing reports EU countries are being used as places to hide dirty money.
The corruption has even reached into the Council of Europe and Romania’s government fired its anti-corruption chief because she was getting too tough on politicians, who want to make it legal for them to accept bribes.