Law Commission misses generational opportunity to improve the law on suspicion

Jonathan Fisher QC (+44 (0) 20 3709 9470, jf@brightlinelaw.co.uk) is lead counsel at Bright line Law (www.brightlinelaw.co.uk).

When the UK Parliament introduced theanti-money laundering regime in Part 7 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA), writes Jonathan Fisher QC, it failed to define the threshold for reporting suspicious activity with any clarity. Subsequent judicial comments have hindered rather than helped, and most recently the Law Commission (Anti-money laundering: the SARs regime, Law Com No 384, HC 2098) [1] has missed a generational opportunity to recommend robust statutory change. It is no wonder that defensive reporting of suspicious activity has pushed the number of financial disclosures and suspicious activity reports to approaching 0.5 million a year (Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) Annual Report 2018).