PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: Pedro Cassiano Santos, Francisca César Machado, Chen Chen and Natalia Fedorova, VdA
This remuneration and performance evaluation policy must not impair individuals’ ability to act in the best interests of the customers. In particu - lar, it should ensure that remuneration measures, sales targets, or other goals do not encourage these individuals to prioritise their own interests or the interests of the credit institution over the interests of their customers. The policy must be assessed at least annually, with the adoption of any measures considered necessary to ensure that it upholds the rights and interests of the cus - tomers and does not create any incentives that could harm those rights and interests. Finally, when drafting and implementing their remuneration policies, credit institutions must consider the European Banking Authority’s Guidelines on sound remuneration policies under Directive 2013/36/EU of 2 July 2021. Banco de Portugal adopted these Guidelines on 21 November 2021, through its Circular Let - ter No CC/2021/00000056. In addition, credit institutions in Portugal that are members of the Portuguese Institute of Corporate Governance must consider the provisions of the Corporate Governance Code. Under the Portuguese Anti-Money Launder - ing and Counter-Terrorist Financing Law, credit institutions and financial companies, as financial entities, are considered obliged entities, subject to the supervision of Banco de Portugal. In this context, the board member responsible for these functions and the person in charge of the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing compliance (known as the Compliance Officer) play fundamental roles. 5. AML/KYC 5.1 AML and CFT Requirements
Consequently, financial entities must comply with several preventive obligations, such as: • obligation of control; • obligation of identification and diligence;
• obligation of reporting; • obligation of abstention; • obligation of refusal; • obligation of record-keeping; • obligation of examination; • obligation of co-operation; • obligation of non-disclosure; and • obligation of training.
Among these, the authors highlight the follow - ing two: (i) identification and diligence; and (ii) reporting. The first obligation encompasses the know your customer (KYC) process, under which obliged entities are required to identify their customer as well as the beneficial owner when: (i) estab - lishing business relationships; (ii) conducting occasional transactions, regardless of whether the transaction is carried out through a single operation or several operations that appear to be related, amounting to EUR15,000 or more, or constituting a transfer of funds or a transaction involving virtual assets, whenever the amount exceeds EUR1,000; (iii) there is a suspicion that the operations, regardless of their value and any exception or threshold, may be related to money laundering or terrorist financing; and (iv) there are doubts about the accuracy or adequacy of previ - ously obtained customer identification data. The measures, information, and documentation requested will always depend on an anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing risk analysis, with the possibility of applying simpli - fied or enhanced measures. The customer’s pro - file should be assessed, specifically considering
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