Three Days to Comply with New Money Laundering Rules

Money laundering: Due diligence requirements change, Lawyers have until just this Friday to ensure they comply with the Fifth Money Laundering Directive, the government announced just before Christmas. The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019 were made on 20 December 2019 and will come into force on 10 January, making changes to various pieces of anti-money laundering (AML) legislation. Among the changes to customer due diligence (CDD) are explicit requirements for regulated persons to take reasonable measures to understand the ownership and control structure of their customers, and to verify the identity of senior managing officials when the beneficial owner of a corporate body cannot be identified. The explanatory memorandum to the regulations says electronic identification processes will be allowed where these are: independent of the person whose identity is being verified, secure from fraud and misuse, and “capable of providing an appropriate level of assurance that the person claiming a particular identity is in fact the person with that identity”.

 Read more: Neil Rose, Legal Futures, https://is.gd/naSN3m