4 March 2021
The risks and penalties of money laundering for charities and how to guard against it
Money launderers will look for any opportunity to take advantage of organisations with weak financial controls in order to launder their ill-gotten gains. Charities, trustees, employees and volunteers who knowingly or unwittingly assist money launderers, or who fail to report suspicions, may commit a criminal offence and find themselves liable to prosecution.
11 January 2021
HMRC’s record fine for money laundering breaches
HMRC monitors over 30,000 businesses to ensure their compliance with the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (the regulations). Businesses which are found to have breached their regulatory obligations are at risk of civil and even criminal penalties.
26 November 2020
Another Civil Recovery Settlement: SFO v Julio Faerman
On 12 November the SFO announced that it had secured an agreement from Julio Faerman to pay a total of £1,198,424.78, following a civil recovery investigation into his UK assets. These assets included a £4.25m luxury apartment in West London which the SFO suspected to have been partly purchased with funds derived from its owner’s corruption.
17 November 2020
A consistent approach to extensions of moratorium periods for Suspicious Activity Reports
The Government has published a circular on extensions to the moratorium period for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), which acts as a restatement of the law and aims to ensure consistency in practice by law enforcement agencies in relation to the Defence Against Money Laundering (DAML) regime under section 335 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). The circular, published September 2020, sets out the responsibilities for the agencies involved in the process, and gives some indication of ways in which affected parties can play a part in the process.
2 November 2020
Account freezing and forfeiture powers widely used by law enforcement agencies
North Yorkshire Police announced in October 2020 the recovery of over £300,000 by means of Account Freezing and Forfeiture Orders (AFrOs and AFoOs). The news serves as a reminder of the popularity and increasingly widespread use of this law enforcement power that was created under the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
