👀 As usual, we’re down at court to cover this blockbuster #bribery case every step of the way, so we can bring you key developments as we head towards trial in October 2027. Keep an eye on our court calendar for upcoming hearings:

⚖️ The defendants arraigned at Southwark Crown Court today were Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga, Martin Wakefield and David Perez who are accused of conspiring to pay bribes in return for getting special deals for Glencore in Cameroon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast between 2007 to 2014.

‼️ But there’s no doubt the SRA has a critical role to play in a successful transition – ensuring standards don’t slide as the UK faces a visit from the Financial Action Task Force and contributing its valuable sectoral expertise to the @FCA’s new mandate as #AML super-regulator

💡 The government’s decision to consolidate #AML supervision of lawyers, accountants and company formation agents within an expanded remit for the Financial Conduct Authority brings a crucial opportunity to deliver a step change in accountability for professional enablers: www.gov.uk/government/c...

⚠️As our recent report concludes, the SRA has shown welcome ambition in raising its game but ultimately the current #AML regime – with 9 different legal sector supervisors on top of 13 accountancy bodies – is completely broken and holding back progress in the fight against dirty money bit.ly/3WFvZZg

💪It’s telling that 73 of the 86 fines – accounting for almost £1m – were issued by the SRA itself. This shows the SRA is eager to use its increased fining powers, rather than referring cases to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal which has let firms off the hook despite #AML failings bit.ly/3JGSZ73

💷 To its credit, the SRA has stepped up its response to persistent non-compliance, with 151 enforcement actions and a record £1.5m in fines this year - doubling last year’s figures and trebling the number of actions in 2022/23.

📖 The problems uncovered by @SRA tell a familiar story - lawyers are continuing to fall short on the basics of #AML compliance. Half of non-compliant firms were not carrying out client & matter risk assessments as required, while processes set out on paper were not being followed in practice.

📉Yet this increased scrutiny has exposed worsening non-compliance - a whopping 86% of law firms were either non-compliant (32% compared to 23% in 2023/24) or only partially compliant (54% compared to 55% in 2023/24). And the rate of full compliance has dropped nearly 10% - from 22% in 2023/24 to 13%

📈On a positive note, the SRA has massively scaled up its supervisory activity, making a record-breaking number of 864 inspections – 50% more than 2023/24 and 300% more than 2022/23. This uptick reflects a welcome investment by the biggest legal sector regulator in its #AML capacity. bit.ly/43VahUT

You commented on the seventh post in a thread of eight posts 🤷

Maybe read the whole thread?

💷 Relaxing restrictive rules that agencies must ‘use or lose’ funds within a year, and reinvesting fines and seized criminal assets into an #EconomicCrimeFightingFund are becoming critical priorities.

🚔 If the Treasury is unwilling to fund the UK’s primary serious crime fighting agency properly it must look at innovative ways to increase funding for agencies that play a key role in tackling serious organised and economic crime.

🕵️ That is likely to leave units such as the International Corruption Unit, the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre and even the Financial Intelligence Unit struggling to recruit and retain staff. Worse yet it might mean the NCA poaches staff from these teams to fill immigration roles.

⏳ The NCA has said that what amounts to a recruitment freeze means they will be recruiting ‘high priority’ roles - ie those in organised immigration crime enforcement.

🚨 As we warned last year this is not sustainable and is causing chronic productivity and retention problems at the NCA.

🚧 Once again, the government is cutting its nose off to spite its face. If the NCA is to act as the country’s FBI the government needs to invest new funds rather than making it move money around to fund better pay and new officers.

🚨 In June this year, the agency’s independent review body described it as “wholly unacceptable” that
👉 the NCA had still failed to secure and implement meaningful pay reform after 9 years
👉 central government had failed to agree the NCA’s proposal for pay and contract reform for a whole year.