The Albanian parliamentary assembly has drafted a resolution to ask the Financial Supervisory Authority (AFSA) to approve regulatory acts on cryptocurrency and digital currencies within 2022, as the country hopes to avail of advantages posed by the technologies.
In 2020, Albania made headlines when it passed a law called “Financial markets based on distributed ledger technology”. While it was welcomed by some, others questioned whether Albania would be able to properly regulate cryptocurrency and prevent it from being used for money laundering, as it struggled to do so with fiat currency.
The assembly has now called on the AFSA to step up its regulation of the sector and “intensify cooperation with international regulatory authorities to obtain better experiences for this market.”
It also referenced the recent MONEYVAL report that said additional measures were need to to deal with the risk of cryptocurrency.
“The next monitoring report for Albania concluded that this country has not significantly improved its measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in accordance with the FATF recommendations. Among other issues, the report examined new international standards applied to virtual assets, including cryptocurrencies and providers of such assets,” MONEYVAL said.
The Law on Financial Markets Based on Distributed Registry Technology entered into force on September 1, 2020. However, its full implementation is not yet possible, precisely due to the lack of all necessary bylaws.
The law provides terms of licensing for crypto activities in the country as well as monitoring processes for financial infrastructures that operate on the blockchain. Then-minister of finance, Anila Denaj said that the law was created to optimize the potential that the technology offers. She said that it also considered the various risks associated with the industry.
“The draft law aims to regulate conditions for licensing, exercising the activity of operators and stock exchanges and supervising them, as well as preventing abusive practices in the market where severe fines are stipulated for anyone that violates the provisions of the law,” the Minister said.
These risks include money laundering, terrorist financing, fraudulent schemes, and market manipulation.
In November 2021, the AFSA Board approved the first two regulations implementing this law, “On the capital adequacy and own funds of entities operating in financial markets based on distributed registry technology” and ” For the licensing of entities that exercise the activity as a digital token agent “.
They will have until the end of 2022 to do the rest.
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