Recital 153

(153) The revised FATF Recommendations demonstrate that, in order to be able to cooperate fully and comply swiftly with information requests from competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, detection or investigation of money laundering and terrorist financing, obliged entities should maintain, for at least 5 years, the necessary information obtained through customer due diligence measures and the records on transactions. In order to avoid different approaches and in order to fulfil the requirements relating to the protection of personal data and legal certainty, that retention period should be fixed at 5 years after the end of a business relationship or an occasional transaction. There might be situations where the functions of competent authorities cannot be effectively carried out if the relevant information held by obliged entities is deleted pursuant to the lapse of the retention period. In such cases, competent authorities should be able to request obliged entities to retain information on a case-by-case basis for a longer period, which should not exceed 5 years.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.