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Money laundering
November 13, 2001 12:00 AM
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
Mr President, one of the biggest gaps in the anti-money laundering regime has been that it only applied to financial institutions. As successive international reports have made clear, lawyers and other professionals become vulnerable to exploitation as unwitting accomplices in the washing of dirty money from criminals and terrorists as banks tighten up, which, I am glad to say, they are at last having to do.
I regard the outcome of the conciliation on this directive as satisfactory if it is interpreted in a common sense way. That means that lawyers, accountants and tax advisers must, outside a strict definition of legal privilege, report transactions that are suspicious, in other words, that they have reason to believe their client is involved in money laundering. This is the only feasible interpretation.
There has been a huge amount of hype on this directive aimed at protecting lawyers' vested interests and not, I am afraid to say, individual rights. This has delayed the finalisation of the directive for an unnecessary six months. Parliament has not exactly covered itself with glory.
I hope all Member States will declare that they have no intention of invoking the option to exempt lawyers from the ban on tipping off clients that the authorities have been alerted. We need to make sure that our legal and financial systems are not exploited, rather than concentrating on the position of the lawyers themselves and their own self-interest.
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