Abstract

The new act on counteracting money laundering and financing terrorism of 1 March 2018 introduces to the Polish legal system Directive 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015. These regulations impose many obligations on the so-called obliged institutions, which include financial institutions and the ones that operate on financial and insurance markets, entities running activity within the scope of providing bookkeeping services, expert auditors, tax advisors, most of counsels, legal counsels, foreign lawyers and other entities. According to the new act, duties of institutions bound by the act are: monitoring transactions, settling actual parties of transactions and conducting analyses regarding possible connections with money laundering and financing terrorism. Failure to comply with the rules of the act may result in administrative fines and criminal sanctions for the obliged institutions.