By a Law of 1 August 2018 ("Law"), Luxembourg transposed into national law Directive 2014/41/EU on the European Investigation Order in criminal matters ("Directive").
The Directive establishes a single instrument called the "European Investigation Order".
The Luxembourg law of 23 December 2016 on the 2017 tax reform (the TRL) extends the money laundering predicate offence to aggravated tax fraud (fraude fiscale aggravée) and tax swindling (escroquerie fiscale). More specifically, such law transposes the revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards dating back to 2012/2013 and Directive 2015/849/EC of 20 May 2015 relating to the prevention of the financial system against money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/TF).
Le “paquet fiscal” que vient de dévoiler le gouvernement comprend d’abord la création d’une nouvelle infraction fiscale : la fraude fiscale aggravée.
Considering the increase in terrorist attacks, the legislator has decided to strengthen Luxembourg’s criminal procedure by introducing draft law N° 6921 (“Draft Law”), inspired by Belgian and French Law. This strengthening can be summarised as follows.
On the one hand, with regard to offenses relating to terrorism, financing of terrorism and crimes against state security, the Draft Law provides for the following:
The Minister for Justice has proposed a new draft law No 6887, dated October 7th 2015 (the “Draft Law”) to insert a new paragraph 6 to Article 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This new provision provides that the absence of a criminal conviction does not preclude the exercise of an action before the civil courts to claim compensation for damages pursuant to the rules of civil law. In practice, this amendment will bring an end to the theory of the unicity of civil and penal offences which has prevailed in courts until now.
Having been published on 5 June 2015, the latest anti-money laundering Directive (EU) 2015/849 (“AMLD IV”), which shall be transposed into national law and which shall become applicable on 26 June 2017, foresees a stronger framework for combating money laundering and terrorism financing.
The first criminal case on the basis of the newly adopted plea bargaining procedure in Luxembourg called « judgment upon consent » has been settled by a lawyer within our firm. This procedure provides that an agreement can be reached between the public prosecutor and the accused person for criminal offences that are subject to less than 5 years of imprisonment. The agreement contains a recognition of guilt as well as the offences and sanctions agreed upon. Criminal courts must approve the agreement at a final stage.
