Authors: Helen Taylor, Daniel Beizsley
Ensuring that lawyers stay on the right side of the fight against money laundering and alerting law enforcement to suspicious funds is essential to the integrity of the UK
financial system and to the UK’s national security. Up to now, the legal profession has largely been allowed to regulate itself when it comes to money laundering – with anti-money laundering (AML) supervision falling to nine different professional bodies in the sector. This system is broken.
Our report, which is based on a comprehensive review and analysis of existing supervisory data over the past three years, finds that there is a long way to go in achieving this goal.
The legal sector supervisors tasked with holding legal firms to account for breaches of the UK’s AML rules remain fragmented, with enforcement action uneven and inadequate. Our five main findings are listed below.
