The EU Commission says it is planning to establish a new supervisory authority to combat money laundering, among other measures, according to documents seen by dpa on Saturday.

The plans indicate that a new “Anti-Money Laundering Authority” will be able to impose financial sanctions on its own in case of violations of EU rules.

It will coordinate the national supervisory authorities and support them in increasing their effectiveness in enforcing the European regulations.

Previously, it had become known that the EU Commission wanted to introduce a uniform cash ceiling of 10,000 euros (11,900 dollars) for payments.

According to the European Court of Auditors, billions of euros from criminal transactions were fed into the regular economy in the EU every year, and the illegal origin of the funds was concealed.

The European police authority, Europol, estimated the value of suspicious transactions within Europe to be in the hundreds of billions of euros at last count.

The EU Commission wants to present the plans in one and a half weeks.

Then the member states and the European Parliament must decide on how to implement them.

dpa/NAN)