Pursuant to Article 72(3) of the Act of 1 March 2018 on Counteracting Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 593, as amended)– hereinafter referred to as the AML/CFT Act – currency exchange office operators are required to provide the General Inspector of Financial Information (hereinafter referred to as the GIFI) with information on foreign currency purchase or sale transactions, the equivalent of which exceeds EUR 15,000, or on intermediation in such transactions.
In order to comply with the above-mentioned obligation, the currency exchange office operator shall submit to the GIFI the form identifying this operator in accordance with the principles set out in Article 77 of the AML/CFT Act.
Pursuant to Article 130(2)(1)(a) of the AML/CFT Act, the President of the National Bank of Poland controls the performance of their obligations under the AML/CFT Act by currency exchange office operators, including those related to providing the GIFI with information on foreign currency purchase or sale transactions, the equivalent of which exceeds EUR 15,000, or on intermediating in such transaction, and submitting the form identifying the obligated institution.
The Act of 27 July 2002 – Foreign Exchange Law (Journal of Laws of 2020,, (item 309) defines the conditions and obligations to be met by such operators. One of them, specified in Article 32a of the Foreign Exchange Law, requires currency exchange office operators to store, among others for the purposes of the control exercised by the President of the National Bank of Poland, documents related to currency exchange services (including documents confirming the fulfilment of obligations under the AML/CFT Act) for a period of 5 years, counting from the end of the calendar year in which they provided currency exchange services.
Obligated institutions, including currency exchange office operators, shall provide information on foreign currency purchase or sale transactions, the equivalent of which exceeds EUR 15,000, or on intermediation in such transactions, as well as an identification form, by means of electronic communication using the website available at https://www.giif.mofnet.gov.pl/.
Where information is provided through the aforementioned website, after the obligated institution has correctly filled in the form and before the data has been transferred to the GIFI, the IT system saves a file archive on the obligated institution’s computer disk, that includes: a file with the .pdf extension containing the document of the completed form ready to be printed, a file with the .xml extension containing data from the completed form in XML, and a file with the .txt extension containing information about the origin of the generated file archive and its purpose.