41. Calls on the European institutions to send out a clear message at EU and international level with a view to curbing all forms of money laundering through the use of the financial markets, in particular by:envisaging possible capital control measures, as recently suggested by the International Monetary Fund itself; encouraging a reduction of the pervasiveness of the financial markets in the context of short-term operations; imposing increased transparency on the use of public funds, first and foremost on those to support private-sector development, and carrying out an effective offensive against tax havens by imposing country-by-country financial reporting on all multinational economic operators; promoting a multilateral ...[+++]agreement on the exchange of tax-related information whilst revising the definition of ‘tax haven’ and the list of these secret jurisdictions; calls on the Commission to draw up clear guidelines on the traceability of money so as to make it easier to identify cases involving the laundering of money deriving from illegal activities; calls on the Commission, with a view to its legislative proposal to update the Money Laundering Directive, to generalise as far as possible the criminalisation of laundering of the proceeds of crime and to establish a legal basis for the widest possible range of investigative powers in this area; calls, in this connection, for all the Member States to be required to criminalise ‘self-laundering’, or the laundering of illicit funds by the very person or entity having obtained those funds by unlawful means; also calls on the Commission, in its proposal, to consider the possibility of extending the criminalisation of laundering to cases where the perpetrator should have known that the assets in question were the proceeds of crime;

42.Calls on the European institutions to send out a clear message at EU and international level with a view to curbing all forms of money laundering through the use of the financial markets, in particular by:envisaging possible capital control measures, as recently suggested by the International Monetary Fund itself; encouraging a reduction of the pervasiveness of the financial markets in the context of short-term operations; imposing increased transparency on the use of public funds, first and foremost on those to support private-sector development, and carrying out an effective offensive against tax havens by imposing country-by-country financial reporting on all multinational economic operators; promoting a multilateral ...[+++]agreement on the exchange of tax-related information whilst revising the definition of ‘tax haven’ and the list of these secret jurisdictions; calls on the Commission to draw up clear guidelines on the traceability of money so as to make it easier to identify cases involving the laundering of money deriving from illegal activities; calls on the Commission, with a view to its legislative proposal to update the Money Laundering Directive, to generalise as far as possible the criminalisation of laundering of the proceeds of crime and to establish a legal basis for the widest possible range of investigative powers in this area; calls, in this connection, for all the Member States to be required to criminalise ‘self-laundering’, or the laundering of illicit funds by the very person or entity having obtained those funds by unlawful means; also calls on the Commission, in its proposal, to consider the possibility of extending the criminalisation of laundering to cases where the perpetrator should have known that the assets in question were the proceeds of crime;

where the criminal proceedings leading to a confiscation order involve a predicate offence as well as money laundering, a ‘criminal offence’ mentioned in Article 8(2)(f) shall mean a predicate offence.

The first areas in which this is envisaged might, in accordance with the Action Plan, be offences linked to organised crime, terrorism and drug trafficking such as trafficking in human beings and the sexual exploitation of children, offences against the drug-trafficking legislation, corruption, computer fraud, offences committed by terrorists, offences against the environment, offences via the Internet and money-laundering linked to these forms of crime.

Institutions, such as banks, and also individuals with similar responsibilities, such as notaries and lawyers, are to be involved in resolving crimes of money laundering.

(4) The European Council calls for the approximation of criminal law and procedures on money laundering (in particular, confiscating funds), adding that the scope of criminal activities which constitute principal offences for money laundering should be uniform and sufficiently broad in all Member States.