Update: STEP News 1 Nov: UK revises anti-organised crime strategy to target professional ‘facilitators’

Original blog:

Ben Wallace MP, UK Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, has called for more to be done to make lawyers and accountants who facilitate money laundering recognise their responsibilities.

As part of a House of Commons Treasury Committee evidence session (pdf) on Economic Crime, Simon Clarke MP asked whether lawyers and accountants were failing to appreciate the seriousness of money laundering. He noted that this may be because they haven’t been faced with the same level of fines as the banking sector has been.

In response Wallace said: ‘I absolutely agree with the point that the facilitators have not had the same focus on them as they should have done. They have a responsibility that they need to live up to and I would like to see them being put under more pressure to comply.’

These words mirror recent moves from the international community towards viewing practitioners such as lawyers and accountants as the new gatekeepers of the financial sector and an integral part of combatting money laundering. Publications such as the OECD’s Model Mandatory Disclosure Rules place a responsibility on advisors to report schemes that may have the effect of circumventing the Common Reporting Standard. The EU’s DAC6 (pdf) put similar requirements on intermediaries who design or promote tax-planning schemes.

Underlining the discussion in the same Treasury Committee session, Robert Buckland MP, the Solicitor General, called the creation of a new corporate criminal offence of failing to prevent economic crime a ‘very important priority’ for him.

Perhaps summing up the changing approach towards lawyers and accountants, Wallace said the following after he was asked if there should be more of a focus on the accountancy world when it came to enabling economic crime: ‘In this half of the year, my message to the facilitators is this: we have had a lot of focus on banks; my investigators are going to be focusing on you.’

STEP will continue to monitor relevant developments both in jurisdictions and with international bodies, as well as providing updates where appropriate.

Daniel Nesbitt, Policy Executive, STEP