Professional Trustees, Money Laundering And “Failure To Prevent”
The passing into law last October of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 reinforced the position that economic crime is a key battleground for UK government and law enforcement. The Act followed on from the earlier Economic Crime...
Bad Timing
On the 21 February 2024, in a hearing widely reported in the legal press, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal ordered that solicitor Matthew Nester should be struck off the roll for recording administrative (non-billable) time against client files when no such...
Entain Bribery Act and FTP
Recent media reports have revealed that Entain, the UK corporate which owns well-known betting chains Ladbrokes and Corals, will pay £585 million as part of an agreement with HM Revenue & Customs to settle criminal allegations of bribery in relation...
UK lawyers banned from advising on Russian-linked business deals
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted a swift and powerful response from governments around the world. Without wishing to engage in direct military conflict with Russia, many opted to attempt to impact the funding of the military...
Corporate fraud and the “identification doctrine”
Last Thursday (15 June) the government announced that new provisions are to be added to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, already at the Report Stage in the House of Lords, to extend the “identification doctrine” to senior managers...
What Exactly Is Money Laundering?
You would think that with all the legal and regulatory focus on money laundering, it would be comparatively simple to define. Not so. Even within the AML sector, many people struggle to articulate a clear definition of money laundering, and...
Proliferation Financing, crypto, art and rock ‘n’ roll
One could reasonably argue that 21st century cultural history is reflected as much by financial crime legislation as it is by pop music or cinema. In much the same way as John Lennon supplied the soundtrack to the end of...
Understanding Chinese Underground Banking
On the 4 August the National Crime Agency announced that they had arrested a 33-year-old Chinese national in Teesside “…as part of a National Crime Agency investigation into a suspected Chinese underground banking network”. They went on to say that...
Black Swan Events
Juvenal, a Roman poet writing around the beginning of the 2nd Century AD, stated in one of his Satires that “a perfect wife is a rare bird in the land, and rather like a black swan”. Those of us tempted to...
Why you need to care about the sanctions on Russians
On the 24 February 2022, Russian troops moved into the Donbas region of Ukraine in what President Vladimir Putin described as a “special military operation” and most Western countries described as a full-scale invasion. In the wake of this military...
Penalties for laundering could take companies to the cleaners
The Criminal Finance Act 2017 (CFA17) received Royal Assent in April 2017 and began to come into force on the 30 September the same year, with a rolling programme of measures designed to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies...