By Jean Christou

The House on Monday voted by majority to limit cash transactions over €10,000 after the previous internation had been referred back to parliament by the president.

The amended law was voted in by 33 MPs from a 56-seat House. It was passed with 29 votes in favour, three against, and one abstention.

Disy MP Demetris Demetriou had tabled the original bill said the referral related to a legal technical issue that had now been resolved.

The House ethics committee earlier Monday had accepted the president’s referral before it went to the vote.

The law aims at adopting certain provisions of European Regulation (EU 2024/1624) on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering or terrorist financing, according to which persons trading goods or providing services may receive or make payment in cash only up to the amount of €10,000 or the equivalent in national or foreign currency.

However, it went unnoticed during the first vote that the EU regulation would not come into force until 2027. The ethic committee rejigged the law to bring it into force immediately.

Demetriou said after the plenum that this was probably the first time Cyprus implemented a European regulation before the EU itself.

During discussions at the ethics committee there had been a point raised that someone could invoke the EU postponement of the measure in the event they were nabbed under the Cyprus law.

However, Demetriou said “There is no need at all to make the connection to the measure that will be implemented in two years.”

“With the removal of the words ‘in application of the provisions of the regulation’, there is no need for anything additional,” he said.

“If anything additional is added, it could potentially create additional problems,” he said.

A representative of the finance ministry told MPs that the relevant European directive states that if a member country finds that it has “additional specific risks” of money laundering and “wants to do something additional, it is entitled to do so.”