Anti-Money Laundering Policy

Intro­duc­tion

This busi­ness is required under the Mon­ey Laun­der­ing, Ter­ror­ist Financ­ing and Trans­fer of Funds (Infor­ma­tion on the Pay­er) Reg­u­la­tions 2017 (‘the Reg­u­la­tions’), to put appro­pri­ate sys­tems and con­trols in place, designed to safe­guard the busi­ness against becom­ing involved in mon­ey laun­der­ing or ter­ror­ist financing. 

Client Due Dili­gence (CDD)

CDD must be con­duct­ed on all clients who retain the busi­ness’ ser­vices that are reg­u­lat­ed under the Regulations.

Reg­u­lat­ed ser­vices are those in which Solic­i­tors par­tic­i­pate in finan­cial or real prop­er­ty trans­ac­tions concerning: 

• Buy­ing and sell­ing of real prop­er­ty or busi­ness entities; 
• Man­ag­ing of client mon­ey, secu­ri­ties or oth­er assets; 
• Open­ing or man­age­ment of bank, sav­ings or secu­ri­ties accounts; 
• Organ­i­sa­tion of con­tri­bu­tions nec­es­sary for the cre­ation, oper­a­tion or man­age­ment of companies; 
• Cre­ation, oper­a­tion or man­age­ment of trusts, com­pa­nies or sim­i­lar structures. 
• Par­tic­i­pate means assist­ing in the plan­ning or exe­cu­tion of the trans­ac­tion or oth­er­wise act­ing for or on behalf of a client in the transaction. 

When is CDD Required?

CDD must be con­duct­ed for all clients, includ­ing exist­ing clients whose iden­ti­ties have not been checked before or with­in the last three years. 

CDD must also be con­duct­ed on ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of com­pa­nies, trusts or oth­er enti­ties. Ben­e­fi­cial own­ers are broad­ly the indi­vid­ual who ulti­mate­ly has con­trol over the man­age­ment of the enti­ty or an indi­vid­ual who owns or con­trols (direct­ly or indi­rect­ly) more than 25% of the shares or vot­ing rights in the entity. 

CDD for clients (and where appro­pri­ate ben­e­fi­cial own­ers) must be con­duct­ed before we com­mence any work on behalf of a client, unless, it is nec­es­sary to start work to avoid dis­rup­tion to the nor­mal con­duct of busi­ness and there is lit­tle risk of mon­ey laundering. 

Ongo­ing Monitoring 

We are required under the Reg­u­la­tions to Con­duct ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing of a busi­ness rela­tion­ship on a risk-sen­si­tive basis. Ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing means: 

• Scru­ti­n­is­ing trans­ac­tions under­tak­en through­out the course of the retain­er (i.e. source of funds), to ensure that the trans­ac­tions remain con­sis­tent with our knowl­edge of a client and the risk profile; 
• Keep­ing doc­u­ments or infor­ma­tion obtained for the pur­pos­es of con­duct­ing CDD up-to-date. 

Source of Funds

We obtain infor­ma­tion about how trans­ac­tions are going to be fund­ed and the ori­gin of funds. The lev­el of infor­ma­tion obtained is on a risk-sen­si­tive basis. 

Cash pay­ments

Cash pay­ments from clients will only be accept­ed for sums up to £500.00.

The busi­ness’ client account must only be used to hold client mon­ey where there is a gen­uine under­ly­ing legal trans­ac­tion or some oth­er valid rea­son for the client’s mon­ey to be held. 

Records

We are required to main­tain records of CDD i.e. copies of evi­dence obtained to sat­is­fy our­selves of the client’s iden­ti­ty, and the source of funds for trans­ac­tion­al work. All of our files are retained for a min­i­mum peri­od of six years. 

For the pur­pose of pro­tect­ing the per­son­al data of our clients, all such data obtained for the pur­pose of com­ply­ing with the Reg­u­la­tions, may only be used for the pur­pose of pre­vent­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing or ter­ror­ist financing. 

Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty

We are pro­fes­sion­al­ly and legal­ly oblig­ed to keep your affairs con­fi­den­tial. How­ev­er, Solic­i­tors may be required by statute to make a dis­clo­sure to the Nation­al Crime Agency (NCA) where they know or sus­pect that a trans­ac­tion may involve mon­ey laun­der­ing or ter­ror­ist financ­ing. If we make a dis­clo­sure in rela­tion to your mat­ter, we may not be able to tell you that a dis­clo­sure has been made. We may have to stop work­ing on your mat­ter for a peri­od of time and may not be able to tell you why. 

If a mort­gage lender is involved, we will also act on their behalf. We have a duty to ful­ly reveal to your lender all rel­e­vant facts about the pur­chase and mort­gage which includes any dif­fer­ences between your appli­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion we receive, and any cash back or dis­counts offered by the seller. 

We expect to receive instruc­tions from your lenders to act on their behalf. If so, we will have to pass the infor­ma­tion you give us that might be rel­e­vant to their deci­sion whether to finance the pur­chase. If you tell us things that you do not want the lenders to know and they are rel­e­vant to the lenders, we may have to stop act­ing for the lenders and pos­si­bly also for you. 

We will decide to stop act­ing for you only with good rea­son and on giv­ing you rea­son­able notice.