Attorney Client Privilege

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On August 29, the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall) a story that other news outlets later have picked up: the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) is investigating whether Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman at the center of the alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from 1Malaysia Development Bhd (“1MDB”), is paying – via two intermediaries – his U.S.-based lawyers with allegedly tainted funds. The report states that there is no indication at this time that the U.S. attorneys were aware that the funds could have originated from money Mr. Low allegedly siphoned off from 1MDB. Rather, the investigation centers on Low’s potential use of intermediaries to facilitate the payments. The DOJ already has filed civil forfeiture complaints seeking to recover almost $1.7 billion in various high-end assets from Mr. Low and others allegedly bought with the embezzled funds, and it reportedly is investigating Mr. Low individually for potential criminal charges.

In light of this report, and the growing attention paid to the potential money laundering risks faced by third-party professionals and lawyers in particular (on which we have blogged: see here, here, here, here, here, here and here), now is a good time to consider how U.S. money laundering and forfeiture laws may apply to attorneys for their work when they receive potentially tainted fees from clients. As we discuss, the criminal and civil forfeiture laws have a potentially broad reach, even in regards to legal payments. Continue Reading Use of Tainted Assets to Pay Attorney Fees: A Primer on the Pitfalls

But Passage of Pending U.S. AML Reform May Reduce Perceived Deficiencies in Beneficial Owner Identification

Last week, Transparency International (“TI”) released an updated assessment of the “beneficial ownership legal frameworks” in the G20 countries, entitled “G20 Leaders or Laggers?”  Since TI’s 2015 assessment of this same issue, the international anti-corruption organization found that “progress across the board has been slow.”  The 2018 Report lauds France, Germany and Italy for making “noticeable improvements since 2015.”  Other countries made more modest upgrades during that time period, including the United States, whose beneficial ownership transparency framework assessment rose from “Weak” in 2015 to “Average” in the 2018 Report.

This post begins with a few observations regarding TI’s methodology in composing the 2018 Report. The post then reviews certain of the areas where TI found the United States lacking as compared to its G20 peers, and examines whether Congress’ recent draft bill, the Counter Terrorism and Illicit Finance Act (“CTIFA”), about which we blogged in a January 2018 two-part series (here and here), may address these identified deficiencies. Continue Reading International Report Critiques U.S. Beneficial Ownership Transparency

I am honored to be part of a panel on March 1, 2018 at the Florida Tax Institute in Tampa, Florida regarding potential money laundering risks, reporting obligations and related ethical issues facing U.S. tax professionals with foreign clients bringing money and assets into the United States.  The panel, entitled Working with Inbound Investors & Businesses – Some Things You May Not Think About May Hurt You, will be moderated by Fred Murray of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and also will include attorneys Jeffrey A. Neiman, A. Brian Phillips and Shawn P. Wolf.

This is a key topic with real-world implications. We previously have blogged about potential AML and money laundering issues facing U.S. lawyers, who are under increasing scrutiny in light of: evolving international standards on professionals as AML gate keepers; global criticisms of the United States as a possible haven for money launderers and tax cheats; and scandals — such as the Panama Papers — involving legal professionals as the alleged facilitators of laundering and tax evasion by their clients.

Specifically, both the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) and the European Parliament have called for U.S. lawyers to meet higher standards in performing due diligence to detect clients’ potential money laundering, and found U.S. lawyers to be “non-compliant” with entity transparency standards. Further, the U.S. Congress has tried to enact legislation over the years to address the issue of beneficial ownership and the role of lawyer (see our discussion of the Corporate Transparency Act here). More recently, and as we have blogged, the ABA’s Task Force on the Gatekeeper and the Profession has prepared and discussed a new ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct that would impose basic “client due diligence” requirement on lawyers.  The panel should be interesting.

If you would like to remain updated on these issues, please click here to subscribe to Money Laundering Watch. To learn more about Ballard Spahr’s Anti-Money Laundering Team, please click here.

In its “Risk Outlook, Autumn Update” (“Update”) released last week, the Solicitor Regulation Authority (“SRA”), a regulator of solicitors and law firms in England and Wales, found that although the legal sector remains at “high risk of exploitation for money laundering,” reports made by legal practitioners to law enforcement of suspicious, money laundering-related activities dropped by nearly 10% last year. The Update then explores the AML risks associated with legal services.See the source image

As we will discuss below, many of the issues addressed by the SRA Update resonate with similar Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) issues which have been brewing recently in the United States — such as the issues of beneficial ownership, the potential use of real estate in money laundering, and lawyers as “gate keepers.”  Of course, however, the very notion of legal practitioners reporting their clients to law enforcement for suspicious activity — a practice which represents a given to the SRA Update in light of U.K. law reporting requirements — remains deeply antithetical to basic notions of client confidentiality and loyalty held by the U.S. legal profession and courts.  We will discuss here this unique convergence of (i) very similar AML issues and concerns confronting the U.K. and the U.S., and (ii) drastically different approaches — at least to date — as to the appropriate duty of lawyers to report the conduct of their own clients to the government. Continue Reading U.K. Regulator Critiques Legal Industry AML Compliance

PANA Issues Recommendations to European Parliament: Tougher Enforcement, Greater Transparency, Improved Information Sharing and Prohibitions Against Outsourcing of Customer Due Diligence

In the wake of the Panama Papers, the European Parliament (“EP”) formed PANA, a Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance, and Tax Evasion. We previously wrote about PANA in May when it was examining the role of lawyers in money laundering and tax evasion schemes. After opening their October 19 meeting with a moment of silence to honor the life of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Coruana Galizia, who recently was killed by a car bomb, PANA approved a draft report and recommendations for review by the EP. The findings and recommendations range from reporting standardization to outsourcing to illicit real estate transactions to attorney-client privilege.

European parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

A few themes emerged from the PANA report:

  • the European Union (“EU”) has strong law, but lacks vigorous enforcement;
  • the EU’s many regulators are stymied by a severe lack of communication, both within nations and between countries;
  • beneficial owners (“BOs”) are mostly unknown because regulated entities are not fulfilling their reporting obligations and the BO register is not robust, accessible, or standardized;
  • intermediaries, like banks, lawyers, accountants, wealth managers, and other financial institutions, are not living up to their obligations because they are engaging in “creative compliance” and leaving compliance responsibility to third parties.

Based on these findings, PANA recommends:

  • uniform definitions and punishments for money laundering and tax-related infractions,
  • “automatic exchange of information,” reciprocity, and “Common Reporting Standards” between regulators to facilitate better information sharing,
  • the creation of a “publically accessible,” standardized BO register that includes the ultimate beneficial owner (“UBO”),
  • the EP pass legislation to “make it illegal to outsource [customer due diligence (“CDD”)] procedures to third parties,”
  • adoption of stronger forfeiture laws that allow cross-border confiscation of illegally obtained assets,
  • stronger sanctions against banks and other intermediaries that “are knowingly, willfully, and systematically implicated in illegal tax schemes,”
  • lawyers should no longer be able to hide behind the attorney-client privilege to escape reporting requirements, like suspicious transaction reports (“STRs”),
  • countries devote more resources to fighting money laundering and tax evasion,
  • the EP vest more oversight powers in PANA.

Continue Reading Money Laundering Watchdog Criticizes Lax AML Enforcement and “Creative Compliance” in Wake of Panama Papers

Second of a Two-Part Blog: Anti-Money Laundering Programs Coming to the Legal Profession?

Yesterday, we began our discussion of the proposed Corporate Transparency Act of 2017 (the “Act”), and observed that, if passed, the Act would represent another chapter in the domestic and global campaign to increase transparency in financial transactions through information gathering by private parties and expanded requirements for Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) reporting. Today, we summarize the details of this complex legislation, focusing in particular on two significant ways in which the Act would amend the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”):

  • Requiring regulations to establish minimum standards for State procedures regarding the formation of legal entities such as corporations and limited liability companies (“LLCs”) and the identification of the beneficial owners of such entities when they are formed.
  • Adding “formation agents” – i.e., those who assist in the creation of legal entities – to the BSA’s definition of a “financial institution” which is subject to the BSA’s reporting and AML obligations. This new definition potentially applies to a broad swath of businesses and individuals previously not regulated directly by the BSA, including certain attorneys.

Continue Reading Expanded Beneficial Ownership Reporting and AML Duties Under the Corporate Transparency Act

First of a Two-Part Blog

In late June, Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Peter King of New York introduced The Corporate Transparency Act of 2017 (the “Act”). In August, Senators Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio introduced companion legislation in the Senate. A Fact Sheet issued by Senator Wyden is here. Representative King previously has introduced several versions of this proposed bipartisan legislation; the most recent earlier version, entitled the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act, was introduced in February 2016.  Although it is far from clear that this latest version will be passed, the Act is worthy of attention and discussion because it represents a potentially significant expansion of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) to a whole new category of businesses.

The Act is relatively complex.  In part, it would amend the BSA in order to compel the Secretary of the Treasury to issue regulations that would require corporations and limited liability companies (“LLCs”) formed in States which lack a formation system requiring robust identification of beneficial ownership (as defined in the Act) to themselves file reports to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) that provide the same information about beneficial ownership that the entities would have to provide, if they were in a State with a sufficiently robust formation system.  More colloquially, entities formed in States which don’t require much information about beneficial ownership now would have to report that information directly to FinCEN – scrutiny which presumably is designed to both motivate States to enact more demanding formation systems, and demotivate persons from forming entities in States which require little information about beneficial ownership. However, there is another facet to the Act which to date has not seemed to garner much attention, but which potentially could have a significant impact. Under the Act, formation agents – i.e., those who assist in the creation of legal entities such as corporations or LLCs – would be swept up in the BSA’s definition of a “financial institution” and therefore subject to the BSA’s AML and reporting obligations.  This expanded definition potentially applies to a broad swath of businesses and individuals previously not regulated directly by the BSA, including certain attorneys. Continue Reading The Corporate Transparency Act: A Proposal to Expand Beneficial Ownership Reporting for Legal Entities, Corporate Formation Agents and – Potentially – Attorneys

A Guest Blog by Bruce Zagaris, Esq.

Today we are very pleased to welcome guest blogger Bruce Zagaris, who is a Partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe.  He is the editor of the International Enforcement Law Reporter; the author of International White Collar Crime: Cases and Materials; and an Adjunct Professor at the Texas A & M University School of  Law.  Mr. Zagaris also is a member of the Task Force on the Gatekeeper and the Profession of the American Bar Association (“ABA”).

As Mr. Zagaris explains immediately below, growing international trends have led the ABA Task Force to consider a new Model Rule of Professional Conduct that would impose basic “client due diligence” requirements on U.S. lawyers to determine whether their clients are engaging in money laundering or terrorist financing.  This development relates directly to issues about which we previously have blogged, including European perceptions of lawyers as potential gatekeepers and of the United States as a haven for money laundering and tax evasion.  The possible new Model Rule potentially would represent a significant shift in how the U.S. legal profession regards itself and its relationship to its clients.  We hope that you enjoy this discussion by Mr. Zagaris of these important issues. -Peter Hardy

Increasingly, international bodies are calling for higher standards for gatekeepers, known in the parlance of the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) as “designated non-financial businesses and professions” (“DNFBPs”). DNFBPs include lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, and trust and company service providers (other than trust companies).  In particular, in the United States, lawyers play a key role in areas that give rise to potential money laundering:  company formation; real estate transactions; business planning; tax planning; wealth management; trust and estate work; and formation and operation of charities, including transnational philanthropy.

In 2006 and again in 2016, the FATF, an intergovernmental body in charge of making and overseeing compliance with international money laundering standards, performed Mutual Evaluation Reports (“MERs”) to assess compliance by the United States with international standards.  While the FATF gave the U.S. high marks generally, both MERs found the U.S. “non-compliant” in gatekeepers and entity transparency.

As a result of this international trend, the ABA’s Task Force on the Gatekeeper and the Profession has prepared and discussed a new ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct that would impose basic “client due diligence” requirement on lawyers.  We discuss this potential new model rule, and the developments which have led to its consideration, below.  Clearly, due diligence for lawyers will increasingly be on the radars of banks, financial institutions, and law firms. Continue Reading AML Due Diligence Standards for U.S. Lawyers