Money laundering regulations put firms through the wringer
Lawyers are struggling to keep up with a crackdown by ministers and regulators on organised criminals and terror groups using legal practices as financial washing machines for dirty money.
The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, which implement the EU’s Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive in UK law, include significant changes for the legal sector.
There are practical implications if this isn’t resolved, says Peter Binning, a partner at London law firm Corker Binning. “Firms will have to retain more information about each of the monies in the account,” he says. “This will be difficult both for firms doing thousands of transactions daily, and smaller firms as they will have to store larger quantities of data.”
Read the full article in The Times Law Brief here, behind a paywall.