Opposition notifies CCR on Money Laundering bill: NGOs’ activity is blocked

On Wednesday, the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Save Romania Union (USR) submitted the notification on the Law                 on the Prevention and Fight Against Money Laundering to the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR). PNL leader Raluca Turcan stated that through this law, the activity of the non-governmental organizations is banned and blocked. “PNL and USR notified CCR on the constitutional challenges related to the law transposing the directive regarding the prevention and fight against money laundering. In his characteristic way, the Speaker of the Deputies’ Chamber and the PSD Chairman Liviu Dragnea took a European directive and thought to use it this time in his reckoning with the non-governmental organizations. In other words, a directive that was published at European level in 2015, which could have been taken by several governments until today, and which could have ben transposed by several parliamentary majorities in parliament, was now embraced by the PSDragnea majority in the Deputies’ Chamber in order to ban and block the functioning of the NGOs carrying out activities of public and social interest, disarming the socially vulnerable people to call for the support of the non-governmental organizations”, Raluca Turcan stated at the Parliament. Raluca Turcan pointed out that “the vitiated voting procedure” in the case of the Law on Money Laundering was also challenged in the notification submitted to CCR. “PNL and USR challenged 4 breaches of the Constitutions and a total violation of the Constitution through the voting procedure related to this law, based on only six articles of this directive. Let’s not forget that the Law on the Prevention and Fight Against Money Laundering was voted twice, according to the same procedure, in the circumstances in which the regulation was breached, because a vote that was suspected to be vitiated cannot be resumed by the same procedure. In other words, by defying the Parliament, by breaching the Constitution, a law with serious Constitutional issues serves the interest of the PSD Chairman Liviu Dragnea at the moment, in his battle with the non-governmental organizations”, Turcan added. USR MP Stelian Ion stressed that the law in question is a tool for the fight against the associations and foundations who dare to criticize PSD. “It is a tool for the fight against these associations and foundations. If you impose things to these associations, and they are so many, and PSD targets particularly the associations and foundations who dare to criticize PSD and the governmental policy, under the sanction of millions of RON, you obviously block their activity”, the USR MP stated. In the PNL and USR notification to the Constitutional Court related to the Law on the prevention and fight against money laundering and financing terrorism, as well as amending and complementing certain normative acts (PI-x nr.483/2018), is written that the provisions of Art.5 par. (1) lett. c) are unconstitutional, since they introduce a different legal treatment for some categories of people who are in similar situations, contrary to the principle of equality before the law, stated in Art.16 of the Constitution. In other words, the Opposition said that “the law provisions in the form that was amended by the Deputies’ Chamber are unclear, deprived of fluency and contain equivocal passages, being impossible to establish the legal conduct to comply with by the citizens belonging to the organizations of the national minorities, being also discriminatory in relation to the other Romanian citizens”. According to the notification submitted by the Opposition to CCR, “the provisions of Art.4 par. (2) lett. c) and Art.5 par. (1) lett. i) are imprecise, and therefore they are unclear in relation to Art.63 of the law, in the sense that according to the latter, all the associations and foundations, including the organizations belonging to the national minorities, have the obligation, under the sanction of being dissolved, “to fill the documents according to the requirements of Art.6, 7, art.16 and 17 of the Government’s Ordinance no.26/2000 as amended and supplemented by the Law no.246/2005 as amended and supplemented, as well as to the provisions of this law, within 12 months since the entry into force of this law”. At the same time, the Opposition claims that in the same normative context, the EU regulation related to the personal data processing and free movement of such data was also breached. “Art.4 par. (2) item 4 of the Law on the prevention and fight against money laundering and financing terrorism, as well as amending and complementing certain normative acts, breaches the provisions of Art.8 of the EU REGULATION no.679 of April 27, 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), since personal data of children are illegally included in order to be processed, also there is a legal obligation to exclude them, provided by Art.8 of the Regulation no.679 of April 27, 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC”, reads the notification to CCR. The Opposition also underlined that by adopting the said law, the principle of lawfulness deriving from Art.1 par. (5) of the Constitution was violated. “The Law on the prevention and fight against money laundering and financing terrorism, as well as amending and complementing certain normative acts (PL-x nr. 483/2018), is unconstitutional in its entirety, because of the breach of the regulatory procedure for adopting this normative act, and Art. 4 par. (2) lett. C), Art.5 par. (1) lett. I) and Art.18 of the law that is subject to the constitutional challenge are unconstitutional for the intrinsic reasons above-mentioned, which lead to the breach of Art. 1 par.(3) and par.(5), Art.16, Art.26, Art. 40 par. (1) and Art.148 par.(2) of the Romanian Constitution”, reads the notification to CCR.