Identification of natural persons

03 February 2011

The Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing stipulates that a natural person must be identified by inspecting a personal ID card, and the personal ID card is a valid official document containing a photo and issued by the competent state authority.

The AML/CFT Law further requires that a photocopy of the personal ID card should be made, and that the date, time and name of the person inspecting the document should be noted on the photocopy.
As natural persons have been identified so far mostly by inspecting their personal ID cards, a dilemma emerged about whether or not to photocopy the chip ID cards.
Our view is that the chip ID cards, as they do not indicate the permanent address of the holder on them, should not be photocopied, but that they should be read using the card reader and the extract of the read information should be printed out (date, time, and name of the person inspecting the document should be noted on the print out).