The SRA also held 109 desk-based reviews. In total, there were 51 ‘enforcement outcomes’ in relation to money laundering—29 fines (totalling £286,976); nine letters of advice; four rebukes or reprimands; and one finding and warning. It also made 20 suspicious activity reports to the National Crime Agency, involving £149m of potential criminal funds, and there were eight Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal prosecutions.
The SRA’s Anti Money Laundering annual report 2021-22, published in October, also highlights the most common breaches such as poor client due diligence and failure to have an adequate firm-wide risk assessment.
Writing in the foreword, SRA chair Anna Bradley said the regulator had ‘significantly increased the resource we dedicate to preventing and detecting money laundering in the last year’, including identifying a sample of firms with exposure to the Russian market and screening their client lists for ‘designated persons’.
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