Professional Football and Anti-Money Laundering

This book maps the newly-amended Belgian ‘Preventative Anti-Money Laundering Law’ (PAML) and its application to the professional football sector in Belgium, examining the goals it is designed to achieve, its primary legal implications for the football sector, and its likely effects. In so doing, this exploratory study aims to provide a preliminary evaluation of the application of the anti-money laundering framework to the sector of professional football in Belgium.

This publication is the first to provide an in depth overview of the content, requirements and obligations of the PAML as well as an initial appraisal of this extension of the PAML from both a doctrinal and theoretical perspective. Furthermore, the interviews that were conducted as part of the underlying research provide some of the first reactions and expectations relating to the extension of the PAML from stakeholders ‘on the ground’.

While this book is primarily concerned with the national context of the PAML and its application to the professional football sector in Belgium, the content of this study and the recommendations and best practices that are formulated on the back of it will be of interest to any country contemplating the extension of its AML framework to professional football, and to any football actors (particularly professional clubs, players’ agents and governing bodies) operating within those jurisdictions, not to mention interested football fans.

Prof. dr. Niels Appermont is Associate Professor at Hasselt University (Belgium), and also currently a member of the RBFA’s Clearing Chamber. He has published extensively on matters relating to both economic law and tax law, and has been awarded several research bursaries in these fields.

Dr. William Bull is Assistant Professor at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). His most recent publications have focused on the regulation of access to and the exercise of the profession of football intermediary, both from a comparative perspective as well as in the light of law and economics theory.

This study presents the results of a research project carried out for, and funded by, UEFA as part of UEFA’s Research Grant Programme, which provided invaluable support for this research throughout.

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• Strada lex Belgium

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