Tax-news.com reported earlier this year that Austria had given way to pressure to abolish its anonymous savings "passbook" accounts, which can be used for money laundering purposes. The new Austrian legislation to this end was officially brought in on 1 November, ending the right to open secret bank accounts, and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has naturally welcomed the move.
For many years the FATF has been concerned with the issue of anonymous passbooks in Austria. In February this year the FATF advised that due to Austria’s continued failure to take action to eliminate the anonymous accounts, Austria would be suspended from the FATF with effect from 15 June, unless certain specified conditions were unambiguously met by 20 May.
The organisation also agreed to call on financial institutions to give special attention to transactions with bank cheques issued by Austrian banks and denominated in Austrian schillings, as these funds might be the result of the closing of anonymous passbook accounts. But Austria elected to comply with the conditions set by the FATF, bringing to an end a 50 year old system aimed at protecting the savings of the population.
In a statement, the FATF said it 'welcomes the new Austrian legislation....which requires all new savings passbook holders to be identified, as well as any holders of existing passbooks that make a deposit to the passbook.' It added that other significant anti-money laundering requirements also became effective on 1 November: 'any withdrawal from a passbook where the holder has been previously identified and which has a balance of ATS200,000 or more can only be made by the identified holder, and payments over ATS200,000 into a saving deposit account require the depositor to be identified.'
The FATF said that Austria has also taken steps to strengthen its financial system by requiring credit institutions to apply increased diligence to (i) transactions that split a large deposit into smaller deposits; and (ii) withdrawals from anonymous savings passbooks prior to 30 June 2002 (by which date existing passbook accounts will have been phased out).
The FATF has stated that it will continue to closely follow developments in Austria regarding the implementation of these measures.
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