ACCA is a Professional Body Supervisor (PBS) for anti-money laundering (AML) in the UK. We welcome the opportunity to provide views on the government’s proposed reform of the AML and counter terrorism financing (CTF) supervisory regime, and the proposals for sanctions supervision. Our response to this consultation has been informed by input obtained from our supervised population and discussions with other accountancy PBSs.
ACCA fully supports the development of an effective UK AML supervisory regime that provides confidence in the UK as a safe, transparent and compliant jurisdiction to conduct business in. We believe that a robust and effective framework to tackle economic crime will help improve and facilitate further commercial activity for businesses in the UK.
ACCA shares the government’s ambition to reform the regime in a way that better tackles economic crime, but we believe only one of the models can effectively do this: Model 1 (OPBAS+). The other three models carry with them significant risks which at best could see money laundering grow, and at worst, see the whole supervisory regime collapse. In our opinion, Models 2, 3 and 4 contain risks which appear to have been severely undervalued in the consultation.
To read the response in full, please download the consultation response document on this page.