Legal Professional Privilege: Reporting AML suspicions is “not black and white”
AML: Financial Action Task Force (FATF) adds Gibraltar to list of countries under increased monitoring
Take note that the international money laundering watchdog has added Gibraltar to its “grey list”. These are the jurisdictions that are addressing structural AML deficiencies and are under increased scrutiny by FATF.
Solicitors acting for clients in Gibraltar, or in transactions where Gibraltar features, should factor this into their AML risk assessment and proceed accordingly.
News and Guidance
Law Society Updates
- News: PM must stop attacking lawyers for upholding the rule of law
- News: Bar strike – what you need to know
SRA Updates
- Researchers appointed to examine overrepresentation in solicitor reports and enforcement
- Update your diversity data
Other Updates
- LSB research report: Vulnerability in legal services – these findings would make the basis of some useful training for solicitors dealing with vulnerable people.
- Legal Futures: SRA reports £161m of suspect transactions by law firms to NCA
- Legal Futures: SRA seeks whistleblowing role as part of SLAPPs action
Webinars
Recording: Legal Professional Privilege
Last Wednesday lunchtime we were thrilled to host Jeremy Phillips QC and Mark O’Brien O’Reilly to discuss legal professional privilege.
The compliance world is sometimes guilty of glossing over the importance of privilege. For example, the interplay between reporting suspicious activity under AML legislation and LPP. The Proceeds of Crime Act expressly protects privileged circumstances, but the solicitor needs to be confident that it applies.
Watch the recording here (passcode A9S*%s=b) – available for 30 days.
Disciplinary decisions
- Oliver Conway – trainee fined £2,000 for drunken advances made towards female colleagues.
- Simon Frank Rollason– fined £1,500 for drink driving offence.
- Russell Ford – rebuked for failing to supervise a junior lawyer (whose offer to settle a case included a term that complaints against the firm were to be withdrawn).
- Dean Trent Copley – 12 month suspension after being found to have asked property developer clients for introduction fees, contrary to his firm’s bribery policy, and receiving £2,500 into his personal account.
- Paul Geoffrey Hayward – £10,000 fine for breaching undertakings and failing to register charges in linked property transactions.
