Aktiebolag flagged top money-laundering risk; BFN clarifies materiality

A new national risk assessment identifies aktiebolag and foreign companies with a permanent establishment in Sweden as the legal forms most exposed to exploitation for money laundering and terrorist financing.FAR The assessment is intended to support authorities and verksamhetsutövare — obliged entities such as auditors, accountants and advisers — in their risk-based preventive work. For practitioners serving clients in these forms, the signal is to review client risk classifications and customer due diligence where exposure to shell-company structures or opaque ownership exists.

EU:s penningtvättsmyndighet AMLA has finalised three draft technical standards on customer due diligence, business relationships and occasional transactions, and group-wide measures.FAR The drafts aim at more uniform application of the anti-money-laundering rules across the EU and have been submitted to the European Commission for adoptionFAR. They are proposals, not yet binding dutiesFAR; practitioners should track the Commission's adoption before changing procedures.

Brå's evaluation of the corporate money-laundering offence (näringspenningtvätt, Lag (2017:630) om åtgärder mot penningtvätt och finansiering av terrorism is the civil preventive framework; the criminal offence sits in Lag (2014:307) om straff för penningtvättbrott) finds it is applied more broadly than the legislator intended.FAR Almost half of the reviewed preliminary investigations concern offences outside companiesFAR, and uncertainty remains about how the provision should be applied. Until courts or the legislator clarify the scope, advisers should not assume conduct outside a business context falls outside the offence.

Bokföringsnämnden (BFN) clarifies in an opinion to Kammarrätten i SundsvallFAR that materiality (väsentlighetsprincipen) must be assessed on the circumstances of each individual caseFAR. Both the size and the nature of a deviation matterFAR: even small errors can be unacceptable where they concern information of particular importance to the users of the annual reportFAR. Under Årsredovisningslagen a company may depart from the accounting, presentation, measurement, disclosure and consolidation rules only where the consequence of the deviation is not material (oväsentlig), judged against whether the omission or misstatement could reasonably be expected to influence users' decisions.Skatteverket Preparers and reviewers of annual accounts should therefore document case-by-case materiality judgments rather than relying on fixed quantitative thresholds alone.

IFAC has launched six global principles for a sustainable working life in the audit and accounting professionFAR, covering supportive leadership, work-life balance and development opportunities intended to help firms attract and retain staff.

Ekobrottsmyndigheten has indicted five people in MalmöFAR for, among other things, aggravated tax offences, aggravated accounting offences and aggravated money-laundering offencesFAR. According to the indictments, false invoices for multi-million amounts and provided bank accounts were used to launder money and make incorrect VAT deductions.FAR The case is at the indictment stage; no court finding is reported.

Legal basis: Lag (2017:630) om åtgärder mot penningtvätt och finansiering av terrorism and Lag (2014:307) om straff för penningtvättbrott; Årsredovisningslagen and BFN guidance on the väsentlighetsprincipen.