37 Amendments of Jean-Luc SCHAFFHAUSER related to 2017/2203(INI)
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas legally sourced financing can be diverted by the recipient to third parties, individuals, states or entities with links to terrorist activity;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas given that terrorism is a global crime, the effective response to it must also be a global oneinternational, on the basis of cooperation between nations, with coordination and the exchange of basic information on physical and legal persons, and suspicious activity, being absolutely vital;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas there is a need for a preventive strategy based on the exchange of basic information, among intelligence agencies involved in combating the financing of terrorismnd whereas history shows that intelligence agencies themselves have often been involved in illegal operations in relation to combating the financing of terrorism – see, for example: Bundesnachrichtendienst (German Federal Intelligence Service) report of 22 February 2005 on Kosovo published in 2008 by WikiLeaks (https://file.wikileaks.org/file/bnd-kosovo- feb-2005.pdf); and, on the funding and arming of the al-Nusra Front by the CIA, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/worl d/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels- supplied-black-market-officials-say.html – and whereas cooperation between such agencies must therefore be supervised by states’ representatives through interparliamentary cooperation among MPs selected randomly, so as to avoid any repetition of such abuses which threaten the rule of law and democracy in general;
Amendment 53 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas there is a need for an institution-based European platform – which thus far has existed on an informal basis – to centralise the receipt of information, which is currently spread out among 28 Member States; , in this context, not only for a platform for cooperation among nations – and what is required is not the creation of new institutions but rather measures to make those that already exist at international level (including Interpol and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) and in the EU Member States more effective and easier to monitor – but also for multilateral cooperation, specifically with the services of states where terrorists come from, in order to ensure that efforts to combat terrorism are genuine and effective;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas there has been a positive change in the attitudes of a number of Muslim states towards Islamic terrorism and in their readiness to cooperate more closely in addressing it;
Amendment 72 #
Ga. whereas clumsy and unlawful intervention by the West contributed to the rise of Islamic terrorism;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas leaked intelligence even suggests that institutions and individuals in the Arabian GulfWestern World and even states (the support by Francois Hollande’s Government for the terrorist al-Nusra Front, against the advice of the US State Department, being one example) are providing financial and logistical support to ISIS/Da’esh and other radical groups, and whereas without this funding many of these terrorist groups would not be self- sufficient;
Amendment 86 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
Ha. whereas, in both Europe and the Middle East, many extremist Islamic groups receive indirect support from foreign governments and even formal support through the diplomatic activities of certain Western countries (the US State Department, for example, has supported the Muslim Brotherhood since the events of the Arab Spring, including since the coming to power of Donald Trump, who, under pressure from his administration, decided not to sign an executive order classing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, see Washington Times of 27 March 2017), and whereas these extremist movements also find mouthpieces within the EU institutions;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas ISIS/Da’esh is attempting to channel its money out of its diminishing territory in Syria and Iraq via oil exports, investment in businesses, illegal fund transfers and compulsory exchanges of foreign currency for ISIS/Da’esh currency; whereas ISIS/Da’esh is laundering the proceeds of its criminal activities by buying businesses and assets of all kinds while certain state and semi-state protagonists, driven by short-term geopolitical calculations, look on benignly; whereas these sources could allow ISIS to continue funding future criminal acts after its military defeat;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I a (new)
Recital I a (new)
Ia. whereas the full story of the emergence and ramifications of ISIS and the truth about its relationships with a number of countries and government services have yet to be told;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J a (new)
Recital J a (new)
Ja. whereas, according to the US Court of Auditors, only 0.2% of the flow of ‘dirty money’ is detected and intercepted, i.e. approximately 25 cents for every USD 100 laundered;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J b (new)
Recital J b (new)
Jb. whereas delegating part of the task of combating money laundering to banks would be the equivalent of delegating a sovereign public service, giving the banks excessive powers under ordinary law despite the fact that they have often been implicated in the recycling of ‘dirty money’; whereas it runs counter to the principles of democracy for a state to agree to delegate such an important task, with the potential to disrupt citizens’ everyday lives, without involving the national parliament and the judiciary through the appointment of competent persons selected at random and supervised by the national parliament;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J c (new)
Recital J c (new)
Jc. whereas the way that Western banks function under the universal banking model, with high-frequency trading, off-balance-sheet transactions, derivatives and other forms of betting on the future, and the use of clearing houses, makes it easier to mask transactions, giving the appearance of complying with the rules without actually doing so; whereas the behaviour of banks encourages fraud and money-laundering on a grand scale and whereas, therefore, far from standing sentinel against fraudulent practices, banks facilitate organised crime through their modus operandi, their practices and, in some cases, their capital, and are directly associated with the concealment of crime under a cloak of legality;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J d (new)
Recital J d (new)
Jd. whereas Western and European banks engaged in proven financial abuses which resulted in the crisis of 2008; whereas governments had to bail them out with taxpayers’ money on three occasions (in 2008, 2009 and 2010); whereas, moreover, the current proposal to give them new and excessive powers under ordinary law – as if expecting bodies which engage in criminal and fraudulent practices to apply the law and exercise supervision over citizens – is a case of putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse;
Amendment 106 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J e (new)
Recital J e (new)
Je. whereas the powers in question would be delegated by governments or by the European and national parliaments; whereas, therefore, conflicts of interest among the promoters of the relevant legislation, threatening as it does democracy and sovereignty and placing society under the control of the financial system, ought to be investigated;
Amendment 107 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J f (new)
Recital J f (new)
Jf. whereas certain national and international banks have been, and still are, accessories to organised crime and terrorism inasmuch as they have arranged for the laundering of the proceeds of various forms of trafficking, especially narcotics trafficking (Wachovia Bank laundered USD 378 billion of Mexican drug cartel money between 2004 and 2007, and BCCI was the Medellin cartel’s and General Noriega’s bank), have facilitated illegal transfers of ‘grey money’ (Citibank was accused by the General Accounting Office of ‘disguising the origin and destination’ of USD 100 billion transferred to Switzerland in 2000, and on 21 March 2017 the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Guardian and Suddeutsche Zeitung newspapers revealed that several international banks, including Bank of China, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, had laundered more than USD 20 billion, transferring it via Moldova and Estonia into the European Union), and have refused to perform their tasks of alert and verification properly (HSBC, the largest bank in the UK and sixth largest in the world, was implicated in a case of failure to spot ‘dirty money’ between 2006 and 2009, and is a bank which has its roots in opium trafficking);
Amendment 108 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J g (new)
Recital J g (new)
Jg. whereas banks have already acquired a degree of influence in European societies that potentially undermines democracy; whereas banks have disproportionate authority over companies and individuals and, through their oversight of accounts, a pernicious influence on political life, with the ability to sanction those who oppose them by exercising their discretionary and arbitrary power in respect of individuals’ and companies’ access to the banking services which are essential to ordinary life and civic activity in countries such as France today;
Amendment 112 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point a
Paragraph 1 – point a
(a) takes the view that it is vital to draw up a preventive strategy based on the exchange of basic information among intelligence agencies is vital in combating the financing of terrorism; calls on Europe’s intelligence agencies to improve coordination by setting up a European counter-terrorism intelligence platform with an in-depth focus on the exchange of basic information; that platform will create a joint database for data on physical and legal persons and suspicious transactions; emphasises that the information concerned must include, inter alia, a directory of banks, financial institutions and commercial entities both within and outside Europe, as well as third countries which have shortcomings when it comes to combating the financing of terrorism; reiterates that those responsible for committing, organising or supporting terrorist acts must be held to account for their within the framework of an independent professional body under parliamentary control, the members of which would be selected at random and which would have free access to intelligence agencies’ data, as part of a European platform for intergovernmental-cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism with an in-depth focus on the exchange of basic information; that platform will create a joint database for data on physical and legal persons and suspicious transactions;
Amendment 126 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point b
Paragraph 1 – point b
(b) calls on the Commission to provide funding for programmes fostering the sharing of best practice among Europe’s intelligence agenciMember States strictly to separate state anti-money-laundering agencies from banking institutions, and calls for the banking authorities to be supervised by a body independent of both the state and the banks, made up of representatives of the authorities, MPs and prosecutors and judges who have demonstrated a knowledge of the financial system and a combative attitude towards the control it is assuming in society, with its power of social ‘life and death’ over the consumers of banking services; underscores the need to introduce procedures for safeguarding the rights of consumers of banking services vis-à-vis all forms of discrimination, including political discrimination, notably by requiring that detailed reasons be stated for decisions to close accounts or restrict access to banking services, and by providing for rapid, impartial and effective means of challenging such decisions because, otherwise, opposition politicians will be subject to blackmail by either states or banks; regards collusion between the political system and the banking system as an attack on democracy and a form of ongoing coup d’état against society and its representatives;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point c
Paragraph 1 – point c
(c) maintains, as reiterated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), that it is extremely important that voluntary information- sharing should be improved, and sped up, among financial intelligence units, and law enforcement and intelligence agencies within jurisdictions, among different jurisdictions, as well as in the private sector, especially the banking sectorbe subject to respect for jurisdictional sovereignty and to supervision by MPs selected at random, in order to prevent the procedures being misused for geopolitical ends;
Amendment 138 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point d
Paragraph 1 – point d
Amendment 148 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point e
Paragraph 1 – point e
(e) calls on the Member States to step up the monitoring of suspicious financial activities, making it easier for law enforcement agencies to access suspicious transactions, taking account of the proportionality principle and the right to privacy; calls on the Member States to provide more training for and increase the specialisation of investigators in order to achieve that, and strictly to impose the obligation of professional confidentiality on public officials vis-à-vis banking institutions;
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point e a (new)
Paragraph 1 – point e a (new)
(ea) calls on governments to withdraw from banks the powers of investigation and sanction that they have assumed, by restoring to the administrative and judicial authorities the monopoly on decision-making in relation to the freezing of assets or suspension of bank transactions;
Amendment 157 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point e b (new)
Paragraph 1 – point e b (new)
(eb) asks the European Union to conduct an appraisal of all the ways in which its legislation on money laundering and combating terrorist financing has been or can be misused, in particular through the unexplained restriction of banking services or the arbitrary closure of accounts, affecting both companies and individuals and, more specifically, opposition politicians;
Amendment 159 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point f
Paragraph 1 – point f
(f) welcomes the Commission’s proposal to facilitate cross-border access for law enforcement agencies to bank account registers, speeding up the process of identifying the assets of terrorists in other Member States so that, once terrorists are identified, the transactions they have made prior to attacks can be investigated, and any contacts they have had with other possible suspects can be identifiedpoints out that, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, responsibility for combating terrorism lies chiefly with states;
Amendment 170 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point g a (new)
Paragraph 1 – point g a (new)
(ga) asks Member States to consider the extent of the banking sector’s influence in European societies and its impact on public freedoms;
Amendment 174 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point h
Paragraph 1 – point h
(h) notes the successful cooperation with the USA, andsuggests that the usefulness of the information obtaindata collected and transmitted, in the context of the EU-US agreement to share information from the US Terrorism Financing Tracking Program (TFTP); calls on the Commission to propose the establishment of a specifically European system in this area, to complement the current framework and address current shortcomings, particularly as regards SEPA payments, ensuring that a balance is struck between security and individual freedoms; points out that EU data protection legislation would apply to this intra-European systemcombating money laundering be evaluated, so as to prevent its being used in partisan ways, and that the obligation on state anti-money-laundering authorities to maintain professional confidentiality vis-à-vis banks be strengthened;
Amendment 186 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point i
Paragraph 1 – point i
(i) calls on the High Representative and on the Member States to draw up a list of individuals and entities operating under opaque regimes and with high rates of suspicious financial transactions, the task to be entrusted, however, to an independent judicial authority in order to avoid the sanction be used arbitrarily, and particularly in any political way, as happens too often with the application of double standards in the cases, for example, of people from certain countries, whereas those from other countries engaging in similar abuses are ignored or indeed applauded;
Amendment 194 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point j
Paragraph 1 – point j
(j) calls on the Council of the European Union – under the control of an independent judicial authority in the spirit outlined above – to step up the application of selective sanctions and other restrictive measures against those individuals and entities and to bring back the crime of high treason for cases where financial powers, in collusion with organised crime, assume control of the state and society; welcomes the establishment of the UNSC committee responsible for supervising the application of sanctions, and calls on all the Member States to act swiftly in blocking funds and financial assets; the interests of judicial independence;
Amendment 204 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point k
Paragraph 1 – point k
(k) calls on the EU Member States to establish a monitoring system to ensure that mosques, cultural associations and similar entities provide details of how the funds they receive are distributed, both within and outside the EU, and calls for all the transactions made by those sending funds to be recorded in a centralised database, set up with all the appropriate guarantees; calls for the introduction of mandatory ex ante monitoring of the source of money and its destination where charities are concerned, so as to prevent money being distributed maliciously or negligently for terrorist purposes, all such measures to be subject to the fullest respect for religious observance;
Amendment 226 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point l a (new)
Paragraph 1 – point l a (new)
(la) calls at the same time for the regulation of all practices in Western systems that make for opacity around financial transfers; points out, however, that the end result when a society is bent on general surveillance for the greater good is totalitarianism, and that, given the meagre results obtained in terms of recycling the proceeds of crime, and the link between that ‘dirty money’ and terrorism, in whatever form, national parliaments and the European Parliament could usefully reflect on our liberal system of entirely open borders, with free movement of services and capital, which – besides failing to deliver the promised level of prosperity, as measured against the prosperity and full employment of the 1970s when financial transfers and other activities were subject to regulation – is resulting in citizens being subject to totalitarian social control, so as to counter the system’s unintended effects, with, moreover, the power of social surveillance now being vested in banks, some of them failed and guilty of crimes, all with the support of institutions that continue to call themselves democratic.
Amendment 228 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point m
Paragraph 1 – point m
(m) the Commissioncalls on the Member States to propose the legislation required to prevent e-money issuing companies and intermediaries from allowing funds to be converted for users who are not fully identified, as can be the case with users of public networks or anonymous browsers; in this respect, exchanging encrypted money for actual money and vice versa must, as a compulsory requirement, be done using an identifiable bank account; also calls on the Member States to introduce legislation preventing banks from issuing electronic currency, so as to ensure that banks which are entrusted with companies’ and individuals’ deposits do not take risks in what is a highly volatile market; asks the Member States to consider making the issuing of money a competence exclusively of the state, any money from other issuers being deemed to be counterfeit, thereby depriving banks of the power to create money, a power which, according to Nobel-prize-winning economist Maurice Allais, accounts for 95% of the current money supply;
Amendment 236 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point n
Paragraph 1 – point n
(n) welcomes the proposal for a regulation on the import of cultural goods; calls on the Commission to bring in a traceability certificate for artworks and antiques entering the EU market and originating in territories or places controlled by jihadists; calls on the Member States to establish police units that are specialised in dealing with the trafficking of cultural goods, and to ensure coordination of those units across the Member States; calls on the Member States to make it mandatory for companies involved in art dealing to declare all suspicious transactions, imposing penalties – including criminal penalties, where necessary – for the financing of terrorism through negligence on the owners of companies dealing in art and antiques who become involved in the trafficking of such goods;
Amendment 248 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point o
Paragraph 1 – point o
(o) calls on the Commission to look into the possibility of reforming the relevant regulations and directives with the aim of ensurMember States to consider the range of legal safeguards for citizens and elected representatives that ought to be in place against abuses of procedure ing that financial institutions are required to ask for information on the reason why suspicious large-scale transactions are being made, with a view to monitoring the payment of ransoms to terrorist organisationse context of combating money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as ways of guaranteeing the rights of consumers of banking services, notably by requiring that detailed reasons be stated for decisions to close bank accounts or restrict banking services; and proposes that the European Parliament, following an audit of the situation in the various countries, should take an initiative to that end so as to demonstrate that it is concerned about the observance of basic freedoms and is not busy eroding them;
Amendment 257 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point p
Paragraph 1 – point p
Amendment 261 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point q
Paragraph 1 – point q
Amendment 268 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 – point r
Paragraph 1 – point r