PoCA Chapter 7, as we saw in the previous section created the ‘predicate’ offences of money laundering applicable to all. It also created specific offences for employees in the regulated sector for a failure to report suspicious activity. These are detailed below;-
- S330 An offence for employees in the regulated sector where they know or suspect, or have reasonable grounds to know or suspect, that money laundering is taking place, and where the knowledge or suspicion came to them in the course of their business in the regulated sector.
- S331 Failure to report for the nominated officer in the regulated sector
This places an individual reasonability on all relevant employees. Firms will have specific policy and procedures relating to all aspects of compliance to aid you to fulfil these obligations including ongoing and relevant training programmes. Failure to be trained provides the employee a defence if they are bought to account over S330.
Your firm will have informed you of how to make a report, on which form or in what format to complete your report, and more importantly who to report to, your internal lines of communications.
We will though explore the regulatory side of reporting further