Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-03-Speech-1-101"
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"en.20000703.7.1-101"2
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"Mr President, organised crime is often taken by the public to mean spectacular killings such as the murder of Judge Falcone or drug trafficking. But in truth it means something different. Organised crime is the repeated, systematic committing of crimes by exploiting professional structures; for example, the systematic theft of cars, the systematic theft of credit cards and the like. This kind of crime has two consequences: firstly, the damage is considerable because it does not correspond to a single act, but to an accumulation of acts. Secondly, the money gained from the criminal acts is so great that it cannot be used up unobtrusively by private individuals. At conferences I always explain it as follows: organised criminals simply cannot eat, drink and be merry to a sufficient degree to get rid of the money inconspicuously. That is why they try to disguise the money acquired by criminal means and to pass it off as money which has ostensibly been acquired legally. This is called money laundering. Dirty money is turned into respectable money. Anyone who prevents this from happening, or at least makes it considerably more difficult, cuts organised crime to the quick, stunts its growth and damages its ability to propagate itself.
Mr Lehne referred to the fact that we already had a directive on this very early on which harmonised standards in the European Union. Nevertheless, this new directive is necessary to allow more recent developments to be taken into account. We think it is good that the directive is not just being extended to banks but also to other businesses or professions which might be abused for money laundering purposes, and here the problems associated with the liberal professions have been satisfactorily resolved in our view. We also think it is good that all forms of organised crime, and not only drug trafficking, are to be regarded as predicate offences.
We have attached particular importance to the inclusion of dealers in precious stones, dealers in luxury goods with a value in excess of EUR 50 000 and auctioneers. What surprised us rather was the fact that the Commission did not – although the problem is obvious – integrate electronic money into the directive from the word go. It would seem that the aggressive civil service intelligentsia within the Commission, who put a positive spin on anything to do with the Internet, drown out any critical murmurings about it also being possible to abuse this technology for other purposes.
The Council has disappointed us: so far it has not decided anything at all; it is behaving like a broody ox. I therefore say to the Council: make your decision quickly now! Money laundering is far too serious a matter to entrust to the cowboys and Indians games of small-time Councils of national ministers!"@en1
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