In light of the Money Laundering (Amendment) Regulations 2012 your firm may need to change its reliance procedures.
The range of people and businesses you can now rely upon for Client Due Diligence (CDD) has been broadened to include auditors, external accountants, independent legal professionals, or insolvency practitioners.
They must be members of the professional bodies/government agencies listed in parts 1 and 2 of Schedule 3 of the Regulations.
Firms are advised to review reliance procedures and check there are not any other changes within the amendment statute which impact upon you due to the nature of your business.
For example, estate agents handling the sale and purchase of overseas property are now covered by the regulations and this would impact upon an Alternative Business Structure providing such services.
Many of the previous proposals have been deferred until the Fourth EU Money Laundering Directive is implemented.
The directive will be debated by the European Parliament and examine the following;
- Should firms be required to keep evidence of the ‘beneficial owner’?
- Should the one-year limit be removed from the Politically Exposed Person definition?
- Should credit and financial institutions be allowed to conduct simplified due diligence on pooled client accounts of independent legal professionals (provided the information is available on request)?
