Ochrona sektora bankowego przed praniem pieniędzy w świetle polskich regulacji prawnych

As early as in the early 1990s, it was noticed that the banking sector is exposed the most to be used for money laundering. Because of that reason, the banks were the first institutions to introduce internal regulations aiming at minimizing the risk of unintended participation in the above practices. Some decisions of non-generally binding character could not, however, be the sufficient base for taking all possible actions allowing stopping money laundering. The situation in this respect was changed following coming into force the statute of 16 November 2000 (the statute on fighting against introduction into financial turnover of proprietary values coming from illegal or undisclosed sources and on fighting against financing terrorism), which also covered financial institutions, led by banks. At the same time the crime of money laundering is a punishable act under criminal law and as such meets the statutory description of features included in Art. 299 thereof. Moreover, the general assumptions of fighting against it are also included in the banking law, and a separate clause is even devoted to it, namely Art. 106. At the meeting of the three regulations may – and unfortunately do – arise conflicts, additionally aggravated by the fact that the regulations of the banking law are also referred to by other regulations, such as, for example, the statute of 12 September 2002 on electronic payment instruments. Some of the existing discrepancies have been successfully eliminated. Yet, there are still some areas where there are discrepancies between provisions of the above legal acts. Moreover, some issues of theoretical nature arise in connection with inclusion of the Polish National Bank to the so-called obliged institutions by the statute of 16 November 2000. Institutional changes resulting from taking over by the Financial Supervision Authority of the rights and obligations previously vested with the Commission for Banking Supervision, as an organ of the PNB, may also raise some doubts. This paper is to show the above dilemmas and to try to find scientific solutions to them.