Legal practitioners and conveyancers provide services that operate as a gateway to property and financial markets, financial institutions and other regulated professionals.
These ‘gatekeepers’ provide financial and business services that can be abused to disguise beneficial ownership, conceal the origins and purposes of financial transactions, facilitate tax evasion and, ultimately, launder the proceeds of crime. Operating through or behind a professional adviser can provide a veneer of legitimacy to criminal activity.
Legal practitioners can be used to create complex (but legal) structures that can create distance between criminals and their illicit wealth. Conveyancers facilitate a process that allows for the transfer of ownership of property, a high-value asset that provides ideal opportunities for laundering large volumes of illicit funds.
The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (ML/TF) risks associated with the legal profession include:
Legal practitioners must ensure they conduct a comprehensive ML/TF risk assessment to identify, assess, mitigate and manage ML/TF risk exposures. This is a critical first step in AML/CTF compliance.
These are the services offered by lawyers and conveyancers that may be included as designated services under the AML/CTF Act.
The AML/CTF regime is risk-based, which means that your responses to the AML/CTF obligations placed upon you should be risk-based.
A risk-based AML/CTF regime requires that you understand and address the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing (ML/TF) risks associated with the legal services you offer.
You must then design, implement and maintain systems, procedures and controls that appropriately manage and mitigate your ML/TF risks.
Initialism are the AML/CTF experts, so you don’t have to be.
With over 50 years of expert knowledge and real world experience our AML/CTF compliance solutions will to help you navigate your legal and regulatory requirements so that your business complies with its AML/CTF obligations in the fastest and most cost-effective way.
Initialism has a range of AML/CTF Program solutions to support your business in becoming AML/CFT compliant and maintaining compliance.
Our expertise covers all AML/CTF disciplines and brings unique perspectives, approaches and solutions to the AML/CTF challenges faced by the legal profession
Our AML/CTF compliance knowledge includes working with legal firms and we understand what compliance means for your legal practice
We have experience in delivering workable AML/CTF compliance to legal practices, each with their own unique challenges
Our knowledge and expertise has been hard earned and comes from working in the area of AML/CTF for many decades
We have experience in providing tried and tested AML/CTF solutions, regardless of the size and complexity of your legal practice
Our AML/CTF compliance solutions are flexible and can be tailored to your capacity, experience and budget