The transposition of the European Union Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive into national law is currently in process in Portugal, while European institutions are already working on a fifth version. These legislative reviews aim at identifying beneficial owners, who ultimately own or control bank accounts, offshore companies and real estate properties. Preventing money-laundering should be a priority in the fight against corruption and other crimes, once it is an extremely effective way to avoid criminals to introduce illegal money flows in the legal economy.
Portugal has showed a systemic weakness in preventing money-laundering and financing of terrorism, notably in the real estate sector. It is a high-risk sector in which illicit profits are frequently invested due to the possibility to launder big amounts of money through house rentals or to use properties for criminal activities, such as shelters for terrorists.
Professionals of the sector and relevant authorities, in charge of identifying suspect money flows and potential illegal behaviors, frequently turn a blind eye to the use of figureheads or breach their supervisory responsibilities. Beneficial ownership is still an abstract concept for real estate operators who are used to deal with companies and not with people. On the other hand, policies against money-laundering and financing of terrorism are quite inconsistent. Investment incentives, like Golden Visa, create the ideal conditions to attract illicit capital flows and can have devastating effects on the entire anti-money-laundering European effort. The impossibility to check properly the provenience of the invested capitals and the lack of collaboration of some Golden Visa applicants’ countries of origin do not allow authorities to properly make a risk analysis and to create control and transparency mechanisms. In this regards, Golden Visa became a privileged mean for illicit capitals money-laundering and Portugal risks, concretely, to be Europe’s laundry.
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