On March 26, 2024, Resolution 54/2024 and Resolution 55/2024 (the “Resolutions“) of the Financial Information Unit were published in the Official Gazette. These resolutions change the regime applicable to natural or legal persons engaged in the buying and selling of artworks, antiquities, philatelic or numismatic investments, and natural or legal persons, or other structures with or without legal personality, engaged in the buying and selling of luxury goods or in the export, import, manufacturing, or industrialization of jewelry or goods with precious metals or stones.
On the one hand, Resolution 54/2024 applies to the buying and selling of artworks, antiquities, philatelic or numismatic investments, and on the other hand, Resolution 55/2024 applies to natural or legal persons, or other structures with or without legal personality, engaged in the buying and selling of luxury goods or in the export, import, manufacturing, or industrialization of jewelry or goods with precious metals or stones.
The Resolutions adopt an extraordinarily detailed scheme regarding the obligations of the obliged subjects of art. 20 subparagraph 16 of the Law on the Criminal Origin Money Laundering and Concealment No. 25,246, which surely responds to a requirement of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) evaluation of March 2024. Among other things, the Resolutions establish the adoption of a risk-based approach that implies the application of measures to prevent or mitigate ML/TF/PF proportional to the identified risks, which includes processes for their identification, assessment, monitoring, management, and mitigation in order to focus efforts and apply resources more effectively.
The Resolutions propose a segmentation of customers based on the risk assigned to each of them, and distinguish the due diligence measures to be applied according to the qualification made of them, in addition to contemplating alert signals for the identification of situations that may entail a higher exposure to ML/TF/PF risk. The Resolutions specify the policies, procedures, and minimum compliance controls to be met, the data to be included in the Register of Unusual Transactions, and in the systematic reports that must be submitted to the FIU.
Finally, the Resolutions repeal Article 5 of UIF Resolution 70/2011, regarding the Obliged Subjects covered by the new Resolutions.
