Archive

Keith Nuthall
A BID to weaken the affect on accountants of the proposed new EU money laundering directive has failed in the European Parliament.

MEP’s rejected proposals from the parliament’s justice and home affairs committee to scrap moves to extend the duty of auditors, tax advisors and external accountants acting for a third party, to comply with its rules on identification of clients, record keeping and the notification of suspicious transactions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has created an anti-corruption department that will investigate allegations of fraud within the organisation’s staff or in projects it funds. The bank has recently appointed a director of the department, Maarten de Jong, a Dutchman, Managing Director of the European Institute for Law Enforcement Cooperation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has launched a robust attack on the Council of Europe’s draft convention on cybercrime, which it accuses of being “too vague and confusing” and of threatening “fundamental rights and freedoms.”

A paper from the EU’s Working Party of Data Protection has called for the discussions on the convention to be extended beyond the summer deadline, which currently exists for the adoption of the cybercrime agreement.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has claimed that agreement of proposals to create a European Public Prosecutor to coordinate investigations and prosecutions regarding EU fraud, is essential. Without this, it said in a wide-ranging report on EU fraud, “the fight against fraud will remain a half measure and is doomed to failure.”…

Keith Nuthall
MEMBER governments of the World Trade Organisation are to examine in detail proposals made by the Australian government for the dismantling of bureaucratic barriers that prevent accountants from practising in foreign countries.

Its detailed suggested were made in to the ongoing services round of the WTO, in Geneva, which has just reached the end of its first stage.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE IMPORTANCE of European Union employment within the UK and other EU Member States is widely accepted and its authority is only going to grow over the next 10 years. This is because of the planned accession of eastern European countries to the European Union, meaning that EU employment directives will shape the law of their lands and that their national courts will become subject to the rulings and case law of the European Court of Justice, a key guardian of EU legislation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ARABIC Internet Names Consortium has been set up, to establish domain names in Arabic characters and developing the computer coding necessary to make these addresses work and enable web browsers to negotiate their way through the net in the language.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER governments of the World Trade Organisation are to examine in detail proposals made by the USA and the EU administrations on the dismantling of bureaucratic barriers that hinder companies wanting to sell IT and telecommunications services abroad.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has decided not to oppose the granting of state aid by Italy to the Franco-Italian company ST Microelectronics for three research projects costing the equivalent of some pounds 275 million. The maximum aid permitted under EU regulations is pounds 86 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the acquisition by US-based smart card manufacturer Schlumberger of Sema, the British information technology and business services company. Sema provides primarily standardised software and consulting services, such as data management, customer care, billing and call centres.…