Lawyers, notaries, accountants and money laundering
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13685200610645229 |
| Pages | 62-70 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Ping He |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Lawyers, notaries, accountants
and money laundering
Ping He
East China University of Politics and Law, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
Abstract
Purpose – To call for the legislature to pay more attention to the professional laundering and to
improve the capability to attack money laundering.
Design/methodology/approach – By describing the phenomena that money laundering crimes
nowadays often involves lawyers, notaries and accounts, to analyze the necessity and rationale of
bringing these professionals under the obligations of anti-money laundering, and to present a
reasonable solution to the contradiction between professional privilege and anti-money laundering
obligations.
Findings – In order to keep a balance between the fight against money laundering andthe protection
of professional privilege, we should make a difference among the professional activities: when
professional activities are linked judicial proceedings or in the course of ascertaining the legal position
of clients, they would be exempted from the obligation of anti-money laundering; when they perform
financial or company law activities, they should assume anti-money laundering obligations.
Originality/value – This paper presents a reasonable solution to the contradiction between
professional privilege and anti-money laundering obligations, which would be beneficial to the
legislature.
Keywords Lawyers, Accountants, Money laundering
Paper type General review
A new trend in money laundering methods: from financial institutions
to professionals
For a long time, criminals took advantage of financial institutions to conduct money
laundering activities. Therefore, since the beginning of the fight against money
laundering in the 1980s, the most important international documents on prevention of
money laundering activities all considered that financial institutions should play a
significant role in the field to prevent money laundering[1]. These documents all
emphasize that financial institutions should assume such obligations as custome r
identification, record keeping and suspicious transaction reporting. Besides, the
Wolfsberg Principles, the voluntary central code of conduct agreed to by 11 central
banks, was adopted in 2000. These principles state that banks should ascertain the
identity of depositors and the origin of funds as well as should pay special attention to
the clients from those countries or regions that have no effective anti-money laundering
systems (www.dailynews.tyfo.com/news/itknowing/block/html/2000121100040html
(December 11, 2000)).
As a result of the comparatively rigid and systemic measures adopted by financial
institutions to prevent money laundering, criminals turned to expertise of
professionals to start new methods for money laundering and minimize risks
surrounding their criminal activities. Since the late-1990s, the phenomenon that
lawyers, notaries, accountants and other professionals became involved in money
laundering schemes increased steadily.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1368-5201.htm
JMLC
9,1
62
Journal of Money Laundering Control
Vol. 9 No. 1, 2006
pp. 62-70
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1368-5201
DOI 10.1108/13685200610645229
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