FEATURE
Understanding money laundering and the enablers By Alastair Logan OBE
R
ecent events have caused our profession to be accused of being “enablers” to those seeking to launder dirty money. The vast majority of the profession has not had any involvement with money laundering save for implementing processes to prevent them being used for such a purpose.
There have been sustained and high-profile allegations made against lawyers, some of which have been made by Ministers who should know better. Firms have been “named and shamed” in Parliament using the cloak of Parliamentary Privilege. Our Prime Minister is quoted as saying: “The legal profession and everyone involved in assisting those who wish to hide money in London and in assisting corrupt oligarchs have been set on notice that their actions are under scrutiny”. This from the Leader of the Party in Government which is mired with allegations of accepting Russian money and gifts in exchange for influence.1 Most people do not understand the complexities of offshore tax which has co-existed with the ordinary world for years. What makes the offshore tax havens so attractive is the secrecy that they offer to those who use them. Coupled with absent or inconsistent scrutiny, they have served the rich well. They have become a way for individuals to hide money as well as for banks to derive income and to move cash around to avoid fluctuations in the currency rates.
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Alastair Logan OBE All this started to change when the Panama Papers2 became available in 2016. The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and lawyer–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The whistle-blower who leaked the documents to German journalist Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, remains anonymous. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analysed documents detailing the operations of the law firm. After more than a year of analysis, the first news stories were published on April 3, 2016, along with 150 of the documents themselves. The project represents an important
