"The purpose of the draft law is to establish common guidelines for action in the exchange of information between processors, operational actors and credit institutions," said a government release.
The current regulatory framework has been found to be inefficient and slow and "does not work in practice" according to the government, and so in order to discuss this issue, the Interior Ministry organized several discussions that concluded that amendments to the regulatory enactments that would make mutual information exchange faster and more effective were necessary.
The measures should also help as part of Latvia's concerted drive to reform its financial sector and crack down on money-laundering and related crimes.
According to the new regulations, authorized officials will be entitled to request the data from credit institutions such as banks and loan companies using a uniform form with the fields to be filled in that can be sent by mail, or via an encrypted electronic method such as approved emails.
Information will be exchanged electronically through the State Information System Interconnector Data Distribution Network and the Criminal Procedure Information System.
However, given the complexity of the task it is not envisaged that the new system will be in place before the start of 2021.
