Ireland’s former EU commissioner Phil Hogan has not lobbied his ex-bosses about cryptocurrencies, despite taking on advisory roles at two fintech firms.
esterday, the European Commission unveiled new anti-money laundering rules that will force Bitcoin exchanges and other crypto traders to collect data on their customers.
Financial services commissioner Mairéad McGuinness and trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said Mr Hogan had not, to the best of their knowledge, contacted them about the rules.
It comes two weeks after crypto firm Astra Protocol revealed it had hired Mr Hogan as an executive advisor. Last month, Mr Hogan also began advising Dublin-based fintech, The Proof of Trust & Assurance, on the blockchain technology underpinning crypto assets.
“I had been in contact with Phil Hogan as former trade commissioner,” said Mr Dombrovskis. “In a sense, I had been taking over this work, so we had been in some discussion, so to say, concerning trade, but not concerning crypto assets or anything else related to financial services, and definitely not this package.”
The Commission has tabled plans for an EU anti-money laundering agency to supervise the riskiest firms directly and can step in if national regulators fail to act against suspicious transactions.
The new authority – if approved by MEPs and governments – would be able to levy sanctions of up to €10m or 10pc of a firm’s annual turnover. The bloc is also placing a €10,000 limit on cash transactions, which already exists in Ireland.
MEPs Billy Kelleher and Frances Fitzgerald have said Ireland could be in the running to host the 250-person agency, but the Government will face stiff competition from its EU counterparts and will have to beef up its anti-money laundering credentials to win it.
Last week the EU said Ireland has not gone far enough in supervising lawyers, accountants and other agents that set up trusts on behalf of their clients.
“Ireland must be front and centre in this renewed fight against money laundering in Europe. We must strive for a gold standard anti-money laundering regime,” said Ms Fitzgerald, a Fine Gael MEP.
Ms McGuinness said moves to address Ireland’s “shortcomings” – announced last week as part of a request for €1bn in EU pandemic funds – were “welcome”.
Dublin narrowly lost out to Paris and Amsterdam in its bid for the EU’s banking and medicines agencies post-Brexit.
Ms McGuinness told the Irish Independent that she has no preference for where the new anti-money laundering agency is located.
“My absolute commitment is that we get this authority in place and that it is effective. The location is for others to concern themselves about.”
It will be up to the EU’s 27 governments to fight it out and the decision often comes down to where the most qualified staff are based.
Housing, education, healthcare and transport are also taken into account, and it will matter that Ireland is already home to EU agency Eurofound.