Preparing for financial sanctions compliance: New legal obligations for UK letting agents
Just last year, HMRC fined 254 estate agents a total of over £1.6m for failing to register for AML supervision. …
Insight
The NCA has reported that there has been a 10% drop in the number of suspicious activity reports.
Commenting on the reduction, Donald Toon, director of economic and cybercrime at the NCA said, ‘In light of falling reports, there were significant doubts over whether the legal profession took its obligations seriously.’
The law society fought back decrying the ‘loaded’ language being used by the NCA, taking particular offence at the term ‘professional enablers.’
A senior lawyer also pointed out that these kinds of reports and statements usually happen when a government department was being scrutinised by the treasury.
In all of this a vital piece of logic is missing. Could it, perhaps, be that there is less suspicious activity to report as criminals know how difficult it is becoming to hoodwink lawyers and accountants thanks to their efforts?
