The small print - money laundering regulations
Money Laundering is the process by which proceeds of crime, and the true ownership of those proceeds, is changed so that the proceeds appear to come from a legitimate source.
Professional firms are under stringent obligations to address the risk of money laundering.
For the protection of all our clients, and to comply with these requirements (including the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the Money Laundering Regulations 2007), we operate a system which seeks to minimise the risk we face from being or becoming involved with money laundering.
The onus is on us as solicitors to “know our clients” – not just in terms of being able to provide people with the advice and services they need, but applying due diligence to every piece of work and identifying clients thoroughly.
Under the money laundering regulations and our professional best practice, we are required to ensure that we have and keep satisfactory evidence of the identity of our clients and sometimes people related to them.
We ask all new individual clients, who have not previously supplied such evidence, to provide proof of their identity and confirm their current address and date of birth.
You will need to provide original photographic documents, so that we can make copies and certify that we have seen the originals. The copies are then held on file for regulatory and legal purposes.
If you do not have sufficient proof of identity, please inform the lawyer dealing with your case at the initial meeting or otherwise contact us should you believe there might be a delay in providing documents.
The following documents are suitable forms of evidence of identify.
Current full signed passport
Current UK/EU photo driving licence
Current full UK driving licence (old style)
Resident Permit issues to EU nationals by the Home Office
Firearms certification.
Alternatively, if you have no such photographic documents;
Recent state pension or benefits book / notification letter
Recent Inland Revenue tax notification.
In most cases, this will be sufficient and we will run an electronic check using the information supplied.
However, in certain cases we may request additional information, such as confirmation of address.
The following documents are suitable forms of confirmation of address:
Current Local Authority Tax bill
Recent bank / building society statement or passbook
Current Local Authority rent card or tenancy agreement
Recent utility bill (not mobile phone)
Current UK/EU photo driving licence
Current full UK driving licence (old style)
Recent state pension or benefits book / notification letter
Note: 'Recent' means no more than 6 months old.
For business/not for profit clients, we may carry out normal commercial checks and due diligence inquiries will be made to confirm the existence of the client and (if need be) the identity (or authority) of the person(s) we are dealing with or who own the client.
Other checks (or variations on the above) will be undertaken on each client, sometimes depending upon the nature/type of client, so for example, dealing with a trust or group of individuals acting together may require us to obtain proof of identity from more than one person.
The lawyer dealing with the work will explain this in more detail, if need be.