AML & Financial Crime for Legal Professionals

Session 1:  Anti-Money Laundering

• What do we mean by AML?
• Global size of the problem
• The basic structure of money laundering transactions
• Worked examples of how money is laundered in the legal sector and the firm’s clients
• ‘Predicate Offences’ and their importance

By the end of this session, delegates will be able to identify the different types of AML and explain the different stages of money laundering through the financial system.

Session 2: Regulatory Bodies and Due Diligence 

• The role of multi-jurisdictional regulators in combating money laundering
• Due diligence and KYC basics
• UBO-the importance of the controller
• Not putting revenue before risk
• Understanding the consequences of non-compliance
• Worked examples of where DD/KYC has gone wrong and how to spot trouble
• Suspicious minds and escalation

By the end of this session, delegates will be able to chart the DD/KYC process and identify the key information needed to ensure that new and existing clients can be assessed accurately.

Session 3: Other Types of Financial Crime

• Sanctions & Sanctions evasion
• Sanctions lists and regulatory bodies
• Tax evasion – examining examples and recent issues
• Fraud, bribery & corruption – predicate offences
• Terrorist financing and how legal firms are constantly under threat

By the end of this session, delegates will be able to distinguish between predicate crimes and how these are committed, as well as understand the crime ‘chain’ as the money flows through the financial system.

Course Review & Summary

• Q&A

The trainer has a unique blend of experience in Banking, Investment Banking, Asset Management and the Sports Industry. His expertise is valued worldwide for the quality of his training courses, which are complemented by his recent experience within the financial services and professional services industries.

He read History at Cambridge and then trained as a stockbroker in London before working with Dutch, Canadian and US investment banks in their sales, sales trading and trading departments. For three years, he was given compliance oversight for a regulated investment bank based in Edinburgh.

He spent three years in India managing the learning & knowledge transfer section of a large investment banking offshoring project and then a year in Moscow, setting up the L&D Department [coupled with Graduate Recruitment] for Russia’s largest Investment Bank.

The trainer then moved to the Gulf, where he was hired to set up the L&D and Graduate Recruitment areas for one of the world’s largest Sovereign Wealth Funds, as well as overseeing compliance training for the organisation. Following this, he was seconded to perform the same function at the World Cup organising Committee.

He has recently also been the Chair of a small regulated lending institution in the UK.

Between these stints back inside businesses, for the past 30 years, he has acted as an independent consultant and financial trainer with a focus on Financial Crime Compliance and has received the highest feedback for making these topics understandable and relatable to the everyday activities of clients and delegates. His global experience ensures that he understands a wide variety of cultures, how they learn and how to make that learning effective for each.

Redcliffe’s latest AML & Financial Crime Compliance course for legal professionals will help participants to:

• Understand financial crime and how it impacts their everyday work
• Define predicate crimes and the necessity for proceeds to be laundered
• Understand the importance of ‘professional scepticism’
• Chart the types of global regulatory bodies & standards applicable to lawyers and how they are changing
• Effectively show the importance of KYC and finding the controller in client acquisition, servicing and retention
• Work through examples of good and bad KYC and its potential impacts

This course covers the basics & best practices in anti-money laundering & financial crime compliance for lawyers and is suitable for:

• Any member of the legal profession wishing to update their knowledge on AML & FCC
• Graduates, trainees and interns within law firms who need an effective grounding in the topic
• Those who need an overview of the latest regulatory requirements and key developments globally in AML/FCC
• Anyone involved in the KYC/UBO process within a law firm who needs to keep up to date with ‘best practice’ and improve their internal processes

Financial crime, AML & meeting their associated obligations are some of the biggest challenges facing the legal sector and it’s clients today – as the scrutiny & scale of fines handed out by regulators increases, it is imperative that all those working in this sector [whether fee earners, paralegals or support staff] or providing services to it are aware of the nature of money laundering and how they can take steps to stop it.

Our market-leading, half-day course is packed with current examples of money laundering and its consequences. It is case-study based and interactive, using recent examples of money laundering & financial crime to allow delegates to work through issues and see the financial and human impact of AML in real time.

Taught by the leading trainer in this area, your staff will learn:

• The enormous size of the money laundering industry
• How ‘dirty’ money attempts to enter the system – the tricks of the trade
• The three key procedures that constitute the laundering of cash
• The global regulatory bodies & standards applicable to obliged entities and how they are changing
• Other types of financial crime – fraud, tax evasion, sanctions evasion, bribery and corruption, terrorist financing