By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
THE THREE contenders to lead Europe’s new AML Authority (AMLA) were revealed today.
They are Germany’s Marcus Pleyer, Italy’s Bruna Szego, and the Netherlands’ Jan Reinder De Carpentier.
It’s understood former FATF President, Dr Pleyer topped the rankings in the shortlist sent to MEPs this week.
The MEPs and representatives of the Council of Ministers will now hold closed-door hearings with the three candidates and a public one with their top choice.
But first the new EU Commissioners have to be cleared by the parliament, including financial services chief Maria Luís Albuquerque and then the selection process can get underway.
Earlier this week, AML Intelligence revealed Marcus Pleyer, the former president of the FATF, was one of the final three people in the running to lead the EU’s new AMLA body. The three final names were sent Wednesday to members of two of the parliament’s committees overseeing finance and justice affairs – the ECON and LIBE committees.
The Candidates
Marcus Pleyer
“Pleyer is a serious player,” an MEP told me down the phone from Strasbourg this week. Certainly in the Brussels bubble he is seen as the candidate who can get AMLA off the ground and up and running swiftly. And that is something which is very important given the long runway the agency has had to negotiate over the past four years!
“He understands the job intimately, can navigate the politics but is also incredibly passionate about fighting financial crime,” an MEP on the ECON committee told me.
Dr Pleyer, who spoke earlier today in London at the ‘International Anti-Financial Crime Financial Summit 2024’, had always been expected to be one of the strongest candidates in the running for the AMLA chair job. But when Frankfurt was chosen as the location for AMLA headquarters many observers felt that the chair would go to a French candidate.
Sources in the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week said there were initially some apprehension that the former FATF President ,as a German national, may be less likely to get the position due to concerns about geopolitical balance.
However, it’s thought officials in Brussels felt it would be counterproductive to exclude a candidate as highly qualified as Dr Pleyer for such reasons.
Dr Pleyer is the deputy director general of the German Federal Finance Ministry. He also previously served as a supervisor with the country’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin)
Between 2020 and 2022, he served as president of the Financial Action Task Force.
This gave his international reputation a significant boost, as he was widely recognized to have successfully led the organization through a difficult period during the Covid pandemic.
He is also one of the few European figures who has worked in the field of AML for decades, while also having the experience of leading hundreds of staff.
“Pleyer has been widely praised by the likes of Janet Yellen, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, for making the European concept of beneficial ownership a global standard,” said one member of the ECON committee today.
“He is certainly a stand out candidate for the role,” the MEP noted. MEPs will now organize informal hearings with the candidates based on which they will make their choice, sources said.
The successful candidate will be responsible for building up AMLA as soon as possible. The agency, which will formally open its office Frankfurt at the start of 2025, will eventually have more than 400 staff.
Bruna Szego
From Savona on the outskirts of Genoa, Bruna Szego she graduated with honors in Law from the LUISS University in Rome in 1989, defending a thesis on commercial criminal law. She is qualified to practise law.
Szego’s profile on the Banca d’Italia says “she joined the Bank of Italy working in the area of Banking Supervision at the Head Office, where she helped draw up the domestic and European framework for non-bank financial intermediation and contributed to drafting the Consolidated Laws on Banking and on Finance.
“In 1999, she moved to the Law and Economics Unit, where she carried out analysis and research on corporate governance, civil justice, and finance for growth. She was involved as a national expert in European projects concerning corporate and financial markets law, and played a part in the reform of Italian corporate law and bankruptcy law.
“She returned to the Supervision Area in 2007, and the following year she was appointed Head of Division in the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Department; in this capacity, she was responsible among other things for regulations for bank corporate governance, remuneration systems and protection of bank customers.
“She joined the senior management of the Regulation and Macroprudential Analysis Directorate in 2014, where she was responsible, among other things, for coordinating the work to implement the new European rules on bank crises. She became Deputy Head of the Directorate in 2016 and Head of the Regulation and Macroprudential Analysis Directorate in 2017.
“She became Head of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision and Regulation Unit in June 2022, reporting directly to the Governing Board.
“She has published articles and papers on her areas of interest, spoken at numerous conferences and appeared on behalf of the Bank at Parliamentary hearings.
“She has been a member and President of the Bank of Italy’s recruitment boards for new graduates. She has represented the Bank on a number of occasions, including at European level. She was alternate member of the Single Resolution Board set up within the Single Resolution Mechanism, member of the Resolution Committee of the European Banking Authority (EBA), and member of the ESRB’s Advisory Technical Committee. She is alternate member of the EBA’s Board of Supervisors and member of its Standing Committee on Anti-Money Laundering.”
Jan Reinder De Carpentier
He is Vice Chair of the European Single Resolution Board. Jan Reinder De Carpentier joined the SRB in 2015 as General Counsel in charge of the Legal Service, SRB Secretariat and Compliance function, providing strategic legal advice across the organisation and to the Single Resolution Mechanism stakeholders.
He joined the Dutch central bank in 2002 and held various management positions, with a focus on anti-money laundering supervision, legal advice, early intervention strategies and crisis management.
A Dutch national, Jan Reinder started his career in 1995 as a lawyer in private
practice in The Hague and Amsterdam and holds a master’s degree in civil and
tax law from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
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