Are you prepared for increased anti-money laundering compliance scrutiny, asks Dr Tony Harvey
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is stepping up its efforts to ensure solicitors’ firms do not become embroiled in money laundering activity. All firms must be aware of anti-money laundering (AML) issues and SRA Chief Executive Paul Philip has said that there will be “serious consequences” for those who fail to take their obligations seriously.
In November 2014 the SRA published its latest guidance Cleaning up: Law firms and the risk of money laundering. Money laundering is identified by the SRA as a key priority current risk in the latest SRA Risk Outlook 2014/15. The SRA is also alert to the criticisms levied against the legal profession for the poor quality of its suspicious activity reports (SARs) by the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) in their 2014 statement. The SRA’s AML focus initiative will involve focus visits to law firms to test that robust AML systems are in place, how widely these systems are known within each firm and the effectiveness of reporting suspicious
