Key Takeaways:
- Companies listed in a new registry for cryptocurrency businesses claim to have obtained Italian regulatory authorization.
- These businesses haven’t yet had their compliance reviewed though.
As per reports, Italy is allegedly not conducting adequate checks on the cryptocurrency companies that have been given permission to operate there.
Obtaining regulatory approval is a way to prove that an organization has undergone scrutiny from the appropriate authorities. Regulator approval could not be going in the same direction in Italy, unfortunately.
This season, several well-known cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase, Binance, and Crypto.com, declared they had obtained regulatory authorization to carry on business in Italy. The companies were essentially added to a registry created to make sure businesses complied with the nation’s anti-money laundering rules.
A current list of all financial agents in Italy is maintained by the OAM (Organismo Agenti e Mediator). The industry frequently accuses regulators of processing applications too slowly. However, Italy’s OAM has swiftly licensed 73 cryptocurrency businesses.
Registration in the OAM registry ensures that authorities will review a company’s compliance with local AML laws in the long term. The operators listed on the repertory are accepted as legitimate services in Italy by law, based on the OAM.
The OAM stated that it intends to begin obtaining “customer data” and details on “operations carried out” from the businesses in the upcoming months. The operators listed in the roster are “legally recognised as legitimate services in Italy,” according to the OAM.
Investors can learn if a firm has undergone scrutiny from appropriate authorities in the nation by looking at whether it has received regulatory approval or has met the requirements for licensing with a local regulator.
But in Italy, the “regulatory approval” implied by these assertions might not be as reliable as it seems.
The managing associate at the Milan-based law firm Lexia Avvocati, Francesco Dagnino,
“As far as I’m aware, Italy has the process that is most straightforward. Just a registration, really.”
Lexia Avvocati, a Milan-based law company that has handled applications for about 16 out of the 72 companies on the OAM list, is managed by Francesco Dagnino.
Martin Erhold, public affairs head at cryptocurrency rival Bitpanda, claims that It is important to keep in mind that registering with the OAM as a VASP is merely the beginning of the process.
All VASPs will now be subject to direct inspection for compliance with applicable AML regulations and will have to show that their configurations work.
