British lawyers reject AML ‘high risk’ label
A conference in Britain has heard that classifying legal-services providers as ‘high risk’ for money-laundering is wrong, according to the England and Wales Law Society Gazette.
A Law Society of England and Wales event on economic crime was also told of concerns about British government plans to bolster its anti-money-laundering (AML) regime.
The Gazette says that legal-services providers were assessed as ‘high risk’ for in 2017, 2020, and 2025 national risk assessments published by the Home Office and HM Treasury.
The latest assessment states that law firms are attractive to criminals “due to perceptions of the sector’s integrity”.
‘Simplistic’
Marcus Thompson, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis International who assists corporate clients on AML, told the society’s conference that he disagreed with the rating.
“The whole point of becoming a lawyer is the rest of society rightly regards lawyers as people of integrity … who act at a standard above most people in society,” Thompson said.
While he acknowledged that some sectors of the legal economy were more vulnerable than others, he added: “that does not justify the national risk assessment of lawyers being at highest risk of money-laundering. I think that’s too simplistic”.
Amy Bell, chair of the society’s economic-crime taskforce, said that law-enforcement agencies had been asked to share examples of where they believed solicitors could have prevented criminals from using their services.
“Until we have seen that data, it is difficult to say: ‘Watch out for this’,” Bell said.
‘Multiple requests from banks’
The Gazette also reports that the society is expected to push back on Treasury proposals that would require banks to take “reasonable measures” to understand the purpose of the pooled client account, gather sufficient information about each client’s business, and assess the risk associated with the account.
Simmons & Simmons partner Amasis Saba, a member of the society’s taskforce, said that the onus would fall on banks to be comfortable about who the beneficial owners were, which could include counterparties.
“This is an area the Law Society will be pushing back on … Your teams are going to get battered by requests. If you have multiple banks, [that means] multiple requests,” Saba said.