LOC13:34
10:34 GMT
BRUSSELS, April 3 (KUNA) -- The outgoing executive director of Europol, Rob Wainwright warned that Europe is losing the fight against dirty money due to lack of flow of information among European Union (EU) member states.
"Professional money launderers - and we have identified 400 at the top, top level in Europe - are running billions of illegal drug and other criminal profits through the banking system with a 99 percent success rate," he told Politico, a Brussels-based publication, in an interview published Tuesday.
Wainwright, who will be leaving his post as Europol chief end of May after almost a decade in charge, said "One of my favorite frustrations is on financial crime - the anti-money laundering regime."
"We have created a whole ton of regulations... the banks are spending USD 20 billion a year to run the compliance regime... and we are seizing 1 percent of criminal assets every year in Europe," said Wainwright, a former intelligence analyst at MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service.
Despite that, he said Europe is losing the fight against dirty money because it has used national solutions to tackle an international problem.
That makes for a system filled with "inflexibilities," which prevents the "free-flowing exchange of information across borders," added the head of the EU's police agency. (end)
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