The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (High-Risk Countries) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations added Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Tanzania to the list of High-Risk Countries and removed Nicaragua and Pakistan for the purposes of enhanced customer due diligence requirements in regulation 33(3) of The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLR 2017) from 15 November 2022.
Do your policies, controls and procedures (PCPs) pick up not only the application of the regulations to new matters, but also the need to apply enhanced due diligence and ongoing monitoring to existing clients and matters?
The SRA has published guidance, Complying with the UK Sanctions Regime.
The EU Commission published an updated Supranational Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment.
A decision of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg Business Registers (Prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering or terrorist financing – Judgment) [2022] EUECJ C-37/20 held that public access to registers of beneficial ownership in the EU contravenes GDPR; this is bound to have an adverse impact on the fight against economic crime – Transparency International has said that ‘[the] fight against cross-border corruption [has been] set back by years’.
The Law Society of Scotland has published a guidance note – Cryptocurrencies – Risk Assessment & Source of Funds/Wealth Considerations in the context of Conveyancing Transactions.
See also our section on privilege and AML below.
Links to the above are on www.legalrisk.co.uk/News. For legal advice on AML – risk assessments, PCPs, audits and suspicious activity reporting, contact [email protected].
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