BCL's Shaul Brazil and Caroline Mair are interviewed by LexisNexis to explore the risks of money laundering and Terrorist financing to law firms.
You can read the full article here.
An extract from the article*:
"Law firms are particularly vulnerable to being used to facilitate money laundering and terrorist financing because they can potentially provide legitimacy to 'dirty' funds by, for example, allowing use of their client accounts in transactional work and more generally by acting as regulated 'professional enablers'. Law firms are most vulnerable to being used in this way when acting in certain high-risk areas—not least, for example, when offering trust and company services. Without robust AML policies and procedures being put into place—which provide law firms with the capability of preventing them being used to facilitate money laundering or terrorist financing serious regulatory disciplinary action and even criminal culpability may follow. Failure to properly implement robust AML policies and procedures is therefore capable of causing serious damage to the reputation of the legal sector as a whole."
*This article was originally published by LexisNexis on 3rd June 2019.