AML news

  In September 2023 the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA ) announced a review of the treatment of domestic Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) by financial services firms. The review will look at firms’ arrangements for dealing with PEPs based in the UK and will report by the end of June 2024. In the previous month of August 2023 it invited UK PEPs to share their experiences, including any problems they or their family members have encountered with the PEPs regime. The FCA has previously (in 2017 ) published guidance for how financial services firms should treat customers who are politically exposed persons when meeting their anti-money laundering obligations.

The fourth and fifth EU anti money laundering directives introduced obligations on entities to obtain and hold adequate, accurate and current information on beneficial ownership and on member states to ensure that beneficial ownership information is stored in a central register located outside a company (Central Register). In Ireland these obligations were introduced under the European Union (Anti-Money Laundering: Beneficial Ownership of Corporate Entities) Regulations 2019 (“2019 Regulations”). In the 2019 Regulations, unrestricted access to the information in the Central Register is afforded to certain persons as set out in the 2019 Regulations and restricted access to information in the Central Register will be made available to the general public and designated persons for example a bank carrying out customer due diligence. In 2022 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that access of the general public to information on beneficial ownership registers constituted an interference with rights of personal privacy and data protection under articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of fundamental rights. Readers might note that Ireland has recently responded to the CJEU ruling by implementing the European Union (Anti-Money Laundering: Beneficial Ownership of Corporate Entities) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 on 13 June 2023 .Now ,under the restricted access heading  it must now be shown (by “any person” as opposed to “a member of the public” under the 2019 Regulations) that the corporate or other legal entity  about which information is sought  (i) is connected with persons convicted (whether in the State or elsewhere) of an offence consisting of money laundering or terrorist financing, or (ii) holds assets in a high-risk third country. If this can be shown then the person will be able to access the name, month and year of birth, nationality, country of residence, and the statement about the nature and extent of the beneficial interest held. This information is provided as resources and information only and nothing in these pages purports to provide professional advice or definitive legal interpretation(s) or opinion(s) on the applicable legislation or legal or other matters referred to in the pages. If the reader is in doubt on any matter in this complex area further legal or other advice must be obtained. While every reasonable care has been taken by the Institute in the preparation of these pages, we do not guarantee the accuracy or veracity of any resource, guidance, information or opinion, or the appropriateness, suitability or applicability of any practice or procedure contained therein. The Institute is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of the resources or information contained in these pages.

The National Crime Agency in the UK has recently issued its April 2023 edition (Issue 19) of SARs IN ACTION. It contains items such as a summary of the 2022 SARs Annual Report (which can be accessed in full here ), which features statistics covering the years 2020-21 and 2021-22, an article on modern slavery and human trafficking, and looks at SARs related to cryptocurrency and  trust or company service providers. It also has some information on the new SARs portal and on two new podcast episodes on Evolving Payments and Banking Firms and the UK Fraud Communications Toolkit.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority recently announced that it will collect Treasury’s economic crime levy (Anti-Money Laundering) from July 2023 .An allocation of £300 million between 2023/24-2025/26 generated from the levy  was confirmed in the House of Lords on 27 March 2023. The funding will be allocated for services such as state of the art technology to analyse and share data on threats, hire of new investigators and training of existing ones, new specialist intelligence teams, officers and new financial investigators to analyse suspicious activity reports and a dedicated team to reform the AML supervisory regime .Also ,£20 million will be invested in Companies House and the Insolvency Service to fund the creation of two new intelligence teams and £600,000 to deploy UK experts overseas to raise the global standards on beneficial ownership. This information is provided as resources and information only and nothing in these pages purports to provide professional advice or definitive legal interpretation(s) or opinion(s) on the applicable legislation or legal or other matters referred to in the pages. If the reader is in doubt on any matter in this complex area further legal or other advice must be obtained. While every reasonable care has been taken by the Institute in the preparation of these pages, we do not guarantee the accuracy or veracity of any resource, guidance, information or opinion, or the appropriateness, suitability or applicability of any practice or procedure contained therein. The Institute is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of the resources or information contained in these pages.

  The Irish Minister for Finance announced today that Ireland will declare its interest in hosting the new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority (“AMLA”). According to the latest information, Ireland joins nine other EU Member States which have already declared an interest in hosting AMLA – Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Spain. A final decision on location is expected later this year.  The AMLA will be a significant EU institution, tasked with supervision – either directly or jointly with national supervisors – of entities in the financial services sector in the first instance, but eventually also in the non-financial sector. The supervision will be in respect of the entities’ compliance with anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism rules and standards (AMLCFT).You can read more from the Minister’s press announcement here. This information is provided as resources and information only and nothing in these pages purports to provide professional advice or definitive legal interpretation(s) or opinion(s) on the applicable legislation or legal or other matters referred to in the pages. If the reader is in doubt on any matter in this complex area further legal or other advice must be obtained. While every reasonable care has been taken by the Institute in the preparation of these pages, we do not guarantee the accuracy or veracity of any resource, guidance, information or opinion, or the appropriateness, suitability or applicability of any practice or procedure contained therein. The Institute is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of the resources or information contained in these pages.  

Readers may recall that the anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing, example red flag training material was issued in May 2022. It is a publication by a Joint Practice Group with the Irish accountancy bodies, GNECB and the Garda Financial Intelligence Unit (JPG). Following user feedback since publication, the JPG has now issued an update of the training material. The main updates are: change to reflect that section 1079 Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 applies to both auditors and to tax advisers; clarification on reporting obligations under sections 42 Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, section 19 Criminal Justice Act 2011 and section 59 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001; clarification on use of words speculation/professional scepticism and suspicion; expansion of references to reporting requirements when there is failure to keep adequate accounting records (see Appendix 4 of updated document). You can access the red flags updated document here.

Chartered Accountants Ireland as part of a joint practice group with GNECB  and the Garda Financial Intelligence Unit, ACCA, Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Ireland, Association of International Accountants and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants is pleased to have been involved in producing training material to assist professional accountants and their staff. Please find attached an open-source document that may be used by any person for the purposes of assisting in understanding the requirements of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 to 2021 and to help identify potential money laundering risks with clients. The document can also be found on the Institute's technical hub on the anti-money laundering "red flags" know the signs sub page. 

CCAB-I has revised and updated its anti-money laundering guidance for accountants (“Guidance”) and the update has recently been released to members. The update is the result of some months of work by a working party made up of a cross section of individuals including from the professional bodies, practice and industry. The review was carried out mainly to update the Guidance to take account of changes brought about in recent years by the fourth and fifth EU anti money laundering directives. Those directives were brought into Irish law by a series of regulations (statutory instruments) and the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) (Amendment) Act 2021. Updates include a re-vamp of the section on beneficial ownership. An entire section of the Guidance is now devoted to beneficial ownership. It includes information on obligations on companies and other legal entities and trusts to establish internal beneficial registers and to register certain information on central registers. Some updated guidance is provided on reporting procedures and additions have been made in relation to customer due diligence (CDD) to reflect recent changes in the areas of complex business structures, high risk third countries and PEPs. In the “Suspicious Transaction Reporting” section there are links to FIU Ireland guidance “Reporting Entity Registration Guide” and “GoAML WEB Reporting Quick Reference Guide” which are guides for designated persons on how to register and report on GoAML and also FAQs and guidance from FIU Ireland on how to find and amend a Rejected STR. You can read the updated Guidance here.  

"We are pleased to see what has been achieved in the economic crime arena, but more must be done to build and maintain the UK's resilience to this damaging and widespread crime." The Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (CCAB) publishes its manifesto today outlining what more must be done to build and maintain the UK's resilience against economic crime.  The Manifesto calls for four clear areas for change including SARs (Suspicious Activity Reporting) reform and intelligence sharing, ongoing funding of the UK’s Economic Crime Plan, more action to eliminate modern day slavery from supply chains and the need for public education on fraud risk and personal finance. Angela Foyle, Chair of the CCAB Economic Crime Panel says: ‘Our first economic crime manifesto was launched 5 years ago, and since then progress has been made in key areas, including proposed reforms to Companies House to introduce identity verification for company directors, and a raft of initiatives from the UK's Economic Crime Plan.  However, we remain mindful of the challenges, especially as Covid-19 and Brexit present complex scenarios that can be exploited. ‘Economic crime is damaging and widespread, and we believe that our manifesto presents actions which the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments need to address. These are sensible reforms and actions to ensure the progress already achieved in the UK's Economic Crime Plan with the aim of maintaining the UK's resilience against economic criminal activity.’ Also commenting on the manifesto, Paul Henry, chair of CCAB and director of property consultancy Osborne King adds: ‘The leaking of the Pandora Papers is a timely reminder of the need to strengthen our AML defences. SARs reporting is clearly one important tool in the fight against money laundering but further reform is needed to make intelligence sharing more effective including a two-way intelligence sharing mechanism to enable law enforcement to share new and emerging intelligence with professional body supervisors.’ As we say in the manifesto, intelligence sharing between the accountancy profession and law enforcement is essential.’ CCAB’s Economic Crime Panel will send the manifesto to policymakers and government officials to highlight these areas of concern and to reinforce the vital role of the professional qualified accountancy profession in mitigating these economic crimes. To find out more, download the CCAB Economic Crime Manifesto here CCAB Economic Crime Manifesto