Estonia’s Ministry of Finance has sent a draft bill for a second inter-ministerial coordination round that would give the Estonian Tax and Customs Board (MTA) and the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (RAB) a clearer legal basis to use enforcement register data in tax supervision and in preventing money laundering. The proposal clarifies that bank-secrecy-protected information, which the agencies already have the right to request and obtain, may be accessed via the enforcement register channel for verifying tax liabilities and checking money-laundering suspicions. Use of the enforcement register is framed as a more secure alternative to email-based exchanges in supervisory processes, with queries logged to enable oversight of how the channel is used. The data is positioned as supporting identification of hidden assets, actual income and financial relationships, and enabling faster justified information requests to detect suspicious schemes and prepare proceedings; access would be limited to a small number of staff and require a justified reason. The bill is presented as not expanding existing entitlements to obtain bank secrecy data, but specifying the purposes and extent for which MTA and RAB can request and receive such information through the register, with an expanded explanatory memorandum setting out the rationale for tax compliance checks, risk assessment and anti-money laundering work. The draft moved to a second coordination round because the explanatory memorandum was supplemented with additional clarifications and justifications for the amendments’ objectives.

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