Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Policy

Foreword

Money laundering and terrorist financing represent very serious criminal phenomena. Monetica Srl (hereinafter “Monetica”) has sought to respond responsibly to the dangerous phenomena of money laundering (hereinafter “ML”) and terrorist financing (hereinafter “FT”), in the awareness that profitability and efficiency must be combined with the continuous monitoring of the integrity of company structures.

With this in mind, Monetica is absolutely committed to policies aimed at preventing involvement, even unwittingly, in ML and FT phenomena that could damage its reputation and stability.

The prevention and combating of money laundering is achieved by introducing safeguards to ensure passive cooperation, aimed at in-depth knowledge of customers and the documentary storage of the relationships entered into and transactions carried out, as well as active cooperation in identifying and reporting suspicious transactions to the authorities.

Monetica has set up its internal regulations and policy on AML/CFT on the basis of the so-called Risk Based Approach, i.e. an approach based on risk, focusing on the hypotheses deserving greater attention and implemented by making both monitoring activities and the allocation of dedicated resources more effective. This is aimed at preventing its products and services from being used for criminal purposes, while at the same time promoting a culture of full compliance with current provisions and the effective fulfilment of current obligations.

This document (“AML and FT Policy”), in particular, describes the general principles and criteria – which in turn are the subject of further internal regulations – implemented and managed by Monetica for the fulfilment of the obligations imposed by the Anti-Money Laundering Decree by reason of its core business, with which employees, collaborators, customers, company representatives and business partners are required to comply.

Regulatory Sources

The body of provisions on AML/CFT can be divided into EU legislation and national legislation.

In the EU context, the main legislation of reference is Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20.5.2015 (4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive), on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering or terrorist financing, and the subsequent Directive (EU) 2018/843 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30.5.2018 (5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive), amending Directive (EU) 2015/849.

The main reference legislation in the national context is Legislative Decree 231/2007, or AML Decree, as amended by Legislative Decree No. 90 of 25 May 2017 implementing Directive (EU) 2015/849 or IV AML Directive, as well as Legislative Decree No. 125 of 4 October 2019 implementing Directive (EU) 2018/843 or V AML Directive.

Definitions

Adequate Verification

Procedural activity consisting of verifying the identity of the customer, the executor and the beneficial owner, if any, on the basis of documents, data or information obtained from a reliable and independent source; – obtaining information on the purpose and intended nature of the continuing relationship and, where relevant under a risk-based approach, of the occasional transaction; – exercising ongoing monitoring during the course of the continuing relationship

Customer/Clientele

This is the person who establishes ongoing relations, carries out transactions, or requests or obtains a professional service following the granting of an assignment, normally identified, also indistinctly, by other terms, such as users, contractors, purchasers, etc.

Identifying data

These are the first name and surname, place and date of birth, registered address and domicile, if different from the registered address, details of the identification document and, where assigned, the tax code or, in the case of persons other than natural persons, the name, registered office and, where assigned, the tax code.

AML Decree

It is Legislative Decree No. 231 of 21 November 2007, as amended by Legislative Decree No. 90 of 25 May 2017 implementing Directive (EU) 2015/849 or IV AML Directive, as well as Legislative Decree No. 125 of 4 October 2019 implementing Directive (EU) 2018/843 or V AML Directive.

Executor

It is the person delegated to act in the name of and on behalf of the Customer or who is otherwise granted powers of representation enabling him to act in the name of and on behalf of the Customer. Persons appointed by a public authority to act in the name and on behalf of the Customer are also considered to be executors

Terrorist financing – FT

Any activity “any activity directed, by any means whatsoever, to the provision, collection, provision, intermediation, deposit, custody or disbursement of funds and economic resources, howsoever carried out, intended to be used, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, for the commission of one or more forms of conduct for the purposes of terrorism, as provided for by criminal law, irrespective of the actual use of the funds and economic resources for the commission of the aforementioned conduct

Funds

Financial assets and benefits of any nature whatsoever, including income derived therefrom, owned, held or controlled, even partially, directly or indirectly, or through nominees, or by natural or legal persons acting on behalf of or under the direction of nominees

Occasional Operation

It is a Transaction that cannot be attributed to an ongoing relationship; an occasional transaction also constitutes an intellectual or commercial service, including those with instantaneous execution, rendered in favour of the Customer

Operation Suspect

Transaction which, due to its characteristics, size, nature, as well as to its connection with other transactions or its splitting up or any other circumstance known by reason of the functions performed, also taking into account the economic capacity and the activity carried out by the person to whom it refers, on the basis of the elements acquired pursuant to the AML Decree, leads to the belief, suspicion or reasonable grounds for suspecting that money laundering or terrorist financing operations are being or have been carried out or attempted, or that in any case, regardless of their size, they originate from criminal activity

EU countries

Countries belonging to the European Economic Area

Third Countries

Countries outside the European Economic Area

High Risk Third Countries

These are the non-EU countries whose systems have strategic deficiencies in their national AML/CFT prevention regimes, as identified by the European Commission and other independent international sources, such as the FATF

Politically Exposed Persons – PEP

These are natural persons who occupy or have occupied for less than a year important public offices, as well as their family members and those known to have close ties with the above-mentioned persons, as listed below:

1) Natural persons who hold or have held important public office are those who hold or have held the office of:

1. President of the Republic, President of the Council, Minister, Vice-Minister and Under-Secretary, President of the Region, Regional Councillor, Mayor of a provincial capital or metropolitan city, Mayor of a municipality with a population of not less than 15,000 inhabitants, as well as similar offices in foreign States;
2. deputy, senator, member of the European Parliament, regional councillor and similar offices in foreign states;
3. member of the central governing bodies of political parties;
4. judge of the Constitutional Court, magistrate of the Court of Cassation or of the Court of Auditors, councillor of State and other members of the Council of Administrative Justice for the Sicilian Region, as well as similar positions in foreign states;
5. member of the governing bodies of central banks and independent authorities;
6. ambassador, chargé d’affaires or equivalent positions in foreign states, senior officer in the armed forces or similar positions in foreign states;
7. members of the administrative, management or supervisory bodies of undertakings controlled, even indirectly, by the Italian State or a foreign State or in which the Regions, provincial capitals and metropolitan cities and municipalities with a total population of not less than 15,000 inhabitants hold a majority or full stake;
8. general manager of ASLs, hospital companies, university hospitals and other bodies of the national health service;
9. director, deputy director and member of the management body or persons performing equivalent functions in international organisations;

2) are family members of politically exposed persons:

the parents, spouse or person bound in a civil partnership or de facto cohabitation or similar institutions to the politically exposed person, children and their spouses and persons bound to the children in a civil partnership or de facto cohabitation or similar institutions;

3) are subjects with whom politically exposed persons are known to have close ties:

1. natural persons linked to the politically exposed person by joint beneficial ownership of legal entities or other close business relations;
2. natural persons who only formally hold total control of an entity known to have been set up, de facto, in the interest and for the benefit of a politically exposed person

Virtual Currency Service Providers

Any natural or legal person that provides third parties, on a professional basis, including online, with services functional to the use, exchange, storage of virtual currencies and their conversion from or into legal tender or digital representations of value, including those convertible into other virtual currencies as well as issuing, offering, transferring and clearing services and any other service functional to the acquisition, trading or intermediation in the exchange of such currencies

Digital Wallet Service Providers

Any natural or legal person that provides, on a professional basis, including online, private cryptographic key protection services to third parties on behalf of its customers, for the purpose of holding, storing and transferring virtual currencies

Continuous Report

It is a relationship of duration, which does not end in a single transaction, falling within the exercise of the Institutional Activity

Recycling – ML

It is any activity aimed at:

1. the conversion or transfer of property, carried out in the knowledge that such property is derived from criminal activity or from an act of participation in such activity, for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of such property or of assisting any person involved in such activity to evade the legal consequences of his or her actions;
2. the concealment or disguise of the true nature, source, location, disposition, movement, ownership of property or rights thereto, carried out in the knowledge that such property is derived from criminal activity or from participation in such activity;

(c) the acquisition, possession or use of property in the knowledge, at the time of receipt, that such property was derived from criminal activity or from participation in such activity;

1. participation in, association to commit, association to commit, attempt to commit, aiding, abetting, instigating or counselling anyone to commit or facilitating the commission of any of the acts set out in the preceding paragraphs

Risk(s) ML/FT

This is the risk arising from the violation of statutory, regulatory and self-regulatory provisions designed to prevent the use of the financial system for the purposes of ML, FT, or the financing of WMD development programmes

Full Owner

It is, as the case may be:

1. the natural person(s) on whose behalf the customer establishes an ongoing relationship or carries out a transaction (in short, “beneficial owner sub 1”);
2. where the customer or the person on whose behalf the customer establishes an ongoing relationship or enters into a transaction is an entity other than a natural person, the natural person(s) who ultimately has direct or indirect ownership or control of the entity or who is (are) the beneficial owner(s) of the entity (in short, “beneficial owner sub 2)”). In particular, in the case of corporations or other private legal entities, even if based abroad, and express trusts, irrespective of their place of establishment and of the law applicable to them, the beneficial owner sub (2) is identified in accordance with the criteria set out in Articles 20 and 22(5) of the AML Decree; the same criteria apply, mutatis mutandis, in the case of partnerships and other legal entities, public or private, even if without legal personality

TUB

O Consolidated Banking Law is Legislative Decree No 385 of 1 September 1993

TUF

Legislative Decree No. 58 of 24 February 1998, containing the Consolidated Law on Financial Intermediation

FIU – Financial Intelligence Unit

It is the national structure in charge of receiving, requesting, analysing and reporting to the competent authorities information concerning money laundering or terrorist financing.

Virtual Currency

It is the digital representation of value, neither issued nor guaranteed by a central bank or public authority, not necessarily linked to a legal tender, used as a medium of exchange for the purchase of goods and services or for investment purposes and transferred, stored and traded electronically

VASP or Virtual Asset Service Provider

These are natural or legal persons, as defined in the FATF/FATF General Glossary of Recommendations as amended in October 2018, who professionally carry out, in the name or on behalf of other natural or legal persons, one or more of the following activities:

(i) exchange between Virtual Assets and legal tender;

(ii) exchange of one or more forms of Virtual Assets among themselves;

(iii) transfer of Virtual Assets;

(iv) custody and/or management of Virtual Assets, or of instruments enabling their control; or

(v) participation in or provision of financial services related to the offering of an issuer, or the sale of Virtual Assets

Adequate Customer Verification

Adequate Customer Verification consists of the following activities:

(a) identification of the Customer and the Executor, if any, and verification of their identity;

(b) identification of the beneficial owner and verification of his identity;

(c) acquisition and evaluation of information on the purpose and nature of the Ongoing Relationship or, only in the case of high ML/FT Risk, of the requested Occasional Transaction (relating to the relationship between the Customer and the Executor, between the Customer and the beneficial owner and those relating to the business, without prejudice to the possibility of acquiring, depending on the risk, further information, including information relating to the Customer’s financial situation);

(d) constant monitoring of the relationship with the Client, throughout its duration, and verification and updating of the data and information acquired in the performance of the activities referred to in subparagraphs (a), (b) and (c), including with regard to the risk, if necessary, and the origin of the Funds and resources at the Client’s disposal.

In the acquisition of customer information, Monetica also makes use of the activities of third parties.

Retention of customer information

Monetica guarantees the preservation of the documents of the information it has acquired in order to fulfil the obligations of Adequate Customer Verification so that they can be used for any investigation into possible money laundering or terrorist financing operations or for corresponding analyses carried out by the FIU or any other Authority. Monetica, implementing the provisions contained in the National Reference Legislation and in the Secondary National Reference Legislation, retains the documents, in paper or electronic form, for a period of ten years from the date of closure of the Relationship or from the completion of the Transaction.

Suspicious transaction reporting

The AML Decree requires the company to send a suspicious transaction report (so-called SOS) to the FIU when it knows, suspects or has reasonable grounds to suspect that money laundering or terrorist financing operations are being or have been carried out or attempted, or that the funds, regardless of their amount, come from criminal activity. To this end, Monetica has put in place appropriate operating procedures to protect the correct fulfilment of the obligation, the confidentiality of the reporter’s identity, information, feedback and internal controls.

Training

In compliance with the provisions of the AML Decree, Monetica carefully trains and educates its staff in compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism regulations and with the operating rules specifically defined by the Company. The training is addressed to all Personnel and takes into account the evolution of the regulations as well as the patterns of anomalous behaviour published from time to time by the FIU for the purpose of identifying suspicious transactions.

©Monetica Srl/EN/Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Policy ver 1.0