PORTUGAL Trends and Developments Contributed by: Rogério Alves, Bárbara Marinho e Pinto, Ana Reis Mota and Lua Mota Santos, Rogério Alves & Associados (RA)
The Directive’s transposition deadline is May 2025, with an evaluation report due in 2027 to assess its effectiveness and compliance across member states. Directive (EU) 2024/1640 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 31 May 2024 Directive (EU) 2024/1640, implemented on 31 May 2024, introduces comprehensive revisions to the EU’s strategy against money laundering and terrorist financing. This Directive reinforces existing frameworks, updating prior standards and integrating new safeguards to prevent finan - cial system exploitation. A central feature of the Directive is the focus on beneficial ownership transparency. It provides a unified definition of beneficial owners across EU member states and dictates that companies must disclose detailed ownership information to reduce anonymity in financial dealings. Addition - ally, it consolidates regulatory oversight, stand - ardising reporting requirements across member states to foster a consistent anti-money laun - dering (AML) framework that supports informa - tion-sharing and collaboration between national authorities. The Directive broadens the scope of entities obli - gated to adhere to AML regulations, extending requirements to previously less-regulated sec - tors, such as cryptocurrency providers, traders of high-value goods and various non-financial intermediaries. By encompassing these sectors, the Directive seeks to limit risks in areas prone to financial exploitation. Furthermore, this Directive sets out new pro - cedural obligations for monitoring and enforce - ment, including increased penalties for non- compliance, thereby encouraging both private
and public sectors to adopt stronger preven - tive measures. Complementing these reforms, the European Anti-Money Laundering Author - ity (AMLA) was established to ensure consist - ent application of AML standards and support cross-border AML activities within the EU. Technology and Criminal Justice As highlighted in the previous edition, it is also urgent to modernise procedures, leverage more and better technology, digitalise processes, and simplify and expedite procedural acts, including notifications. Currently, the most fundamental of rights – hav - ing a comprehensive and timely understanding of the process – is denied to both the defendant and the victim (both having a vested interest in the administration of criminal justice), as well as to other procedural participants who may natu - rally have a legitimate interest in accessing the process. The current provision for “consultation” and “obtaining copies” of the process ought to be replaced with the creation of a full digital copy, delivered to the defendant and the victim upon request. This requires the enshrinement of the mandatory digitalisation of every procedural act and its processing through the court’s digital platform, CITIUS. Previously, electronic notifications using CITIUS were only possible in interactions between the court (court official, judge and prosecutor) and the lawyer, and only for certain actions – ie, not throughout all phases of the process. However, recently, Order No 266/2024/1 (pub - lished on 15 October 2024) introduced signifi - cant changes to the electronic processing of judicial matters in Portugal, specifically focus -
370 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook