Changes to the Legal Sector Affinity Group (LSAG) guidance have been approved by HM Treasury.
The significance of this guidance cannot be overstated. Once ratified, the court is required to consider compliance with it in assessing whether a person has committed an offence or taken all reasonable steps and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing an offence.
UK law firms have until now been applying the draft guidance as the benchmark that is expected from their regulators; however, there have been some changes to this draft and law firms may need to adjust their procedures accordingly.
In this session, Kate Burt will be exploring some of the key changes including:
- Updated content around the verification of the identities of beneficial owners
- Redirecting away from the old EU High Risk Third Country lists and towards the UK’s own list
- Clarifications to the section on Legal Professional Privilege, particularly where it may not apply as you know or suspect a money laundering offence has occurred, invoking the need to make a Suspicious Activity Report
- Clarification on what is not “an arrangement” for the purposes of POCA and further clarification on the “adequate consideration” defence
- What firms should be doing now
