Legal Practitioners as Potential Money Launderers: Beneficial Ownership Transparency and PEPs: Solicitors Regulation Authority v Sharif (2019)

Abstract

Legal practitioners enjoy a high degree of credibility and trust. With this comes vulnerability. For example, a solicitor’s trust account may be used by criminals through which to launder their proceeds of crime.1 The need to maintain public confidence in the profession remains of paramount importance and it follows that substantial reputational harm can occur where there is a risk that legal practitioners are being used (wittingly or otherwise) to facilitate money laundering.