Regulatory System and Mechanism for Fighting against Money Laundering, Terrorism Financing and Tax Evasion to Be Improved with Expanded Scope of Regulation in Due Time
Recently, the General Office of the State Council has issued the Opinions on Improving the Regulatory System and Mechanism for Fighting against Money Laundering, Terrorism Financing and Tax Evasion (the "Opinions").
The Opinions propose to bring amendments to existing provisions on cracking down upon crimes of money laundering and terrorism financing and research into a wider scope of upstream offences in relation to the crime of money laundering, in a bid to bring criminals committing such upstream offences into the range of subjects under the money laundering crime. Also, the Opinions call for setting up a system to affirm and publish the list of parties targeted under financial sanctions and conducting risk evaluation among high-risk industries. Further, the Opinions clearly specify that with regard to the real estate agency, sales of precious metals, jewelry and jade, corporate services, and other certain non-financial industries associated with relatively huge risks, a regulatory system shall be gradually established to fight against money laundering and terrorism financing. Furthermore, the Opinions call for severe crackdown upon violations and criminal activities, stating that nationwide special crackdown actions will be launched through multiple departments and across different regions to jointly investigate a number of important cases involving swindling export tax refunds and falsely issuing special invoices of value-added tax; and international cooperation should be strengthened for further progress in mutual evaluation over anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).