A campaign to reduce the burden on solicitors of the money laundering regulations has taken a major step forward, according to the Law Society.
The Treasury and Department for Business, Innovation & Skills said last week that it would consult on scrapping criminal penalties for failure to carry out customer due diligence checks. The Law Society hailed the news as a “victory for proportionality”.
Law Society chief executive Des Hudson said: “If the changes are implemented, while firms will still need to conduct due diligence and report suspicions of money laundering, they will no longer need to fear a criminal conviction if a passport they have on file goes out of date or if they did not get the right number of utility bills or bank statements for every director of a company they are instructed by.”
He added: “We believe this change will help law firms, and others who have to comply with the money laundering rules, to focus more energy on really knowing their client and watching for warning signs of money laundering; rather than being worried they will go to jail if they don’t get the right pieces of paper in every situation irrespective of the risks a client poses.”
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