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Financial intelligence authority to probe 40 law firms over money laundering
Mr Sydney Asubo, the executive director FIA
At least 40 law firms out of over 700, are to be probed by the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) on whether or not, they have complied by putting measures in place to combat money laundering in the country.
This is so because lawyers have been identified as one of those critical professions that are susceptible to being used, not only in layering and integration stages but also as a means to disguise the origin of funds before placing them into the financial system.
Mr Sydney Asubo, the executive director FIA explained that the inspection is going to be sample-based in four law firm categories of small, medium, large and global.
He further revealed that 10 law firms will be sampled in each category.
“We have previously written to the Uganda Law Society that we want to carry out inspections to assess the compliance levels since they have been very low among lawyers and we have received very few suspicious transaction reports from them,” Mr Asubo said during a validation workshop on guidance notes on combating financial terrorism in Kampala.
“So we want to establish why the compliance levels are low. Since there are very many law firms, we can’t inspect all of them, we shall do sample inspections. Only about five percent of the law firms, have complied. This is surprising because we expect lawyers as the custodians of the law, to be the ones to comply. But this is not an exception to only lawyers but across the spectrum of all reporting entities except banks.”
Mr Asubo went on to name some of the compliance mechanism that he expects every law firm to put in place if they are to be compliant with combating money laundering.
Registering with the FIA, appointment of an anti-money laundering control officer, file annual reports on compliance with the law, file large cash transaction of over Shs20m, file suspicious transactions and train themselves are the main measures that each law firm must put in place.
Ms Esther Majambere Musoke, the Ag. Secretary of the Uganda Law Reform Commission, applauded the lawyers in attendance for acquiring tips on how their law firms can become anti money laundering compliant.
Money laundering is the process by which criminals attempt to conceal, disguise the true origin, nature, location, movement and ownership of the proceeds of their criminal activities.
