The European Union is considering a central wealth registry after spokesperson Eric Mane stated the European Parliament had requested a feasibility study on the registration of assets across EU member states.

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This study’s proposal revealed the prospects of managing a centralized assets register for tracking citizens’ wealth across the regional bloc as a way of combating money laundering and terrorist financing. 

If implemented, folks living in the European Union will have to document all their valuables with the register, including their bank accounts, precious metal holdings, bitcoin, fine art, cars, shares, and perhaps even your Rolex watch. However, the EU parliament is yet to discuss the outcome of the feasibility study and provide a final list of the valuables that will appear on the database. 

The Problem with Financial Secrecy

The study has been deemed controversial by many, who see it as another threat to human privacy and data protection. However, discussions for a centralized asset registry begun as early as 2022 in the wake of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s  war against Ukraine which brought to light the dark side of financial secrecy.  

The main challenge that governments in the European Union encountered while enacting sanctions against president Putin’s was the lack of concrete information about assets tied to Putin and his partners. By implementing an EU-wide wealth register, it would be possible to  identify the wealth of sanctioned individuals and assist in fighting financial crime. Besides, it has proved difficult with time to crack down on Putin’s cronies who have mastered the art of concealing the location and exact ownership of assets.

As such,  leaders of the European Commission, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the United States and Canada committed to launch a task force to help enforce financial sanctions. This resulted to a proposal by Italy’s former prime minister Mario Draghi to draw an international register of Russian citizens with over $10.85 million, and probably end financial secrecy which had ended up benefiting Russian tycoons. 

This registry would assist in identifying, locating and freezing assets of suspicious Russian elites and their family members including safe deposit boxes, yachts, real estate property and shareholdings. However, the proposal by Italy’s prime minister was not a perfect one, but on the basis of his ideas, the European Commission sought to conduct a feasibility study and establish whether such a register would introduce new privacy concerns or had the potential to provide sufficient data to competent authorities in the fight against terrorism, money laundering and perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

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In general, considerations of a centralized wealth register could be a major leap for the European Union in upholding financial transparency and tackling illicit activities. However, the regional bloc is yet to undertake subsequent legislative processes to determine the specifics of implementing the feasibility study.

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