Partner Anna Bradshaw’s comments are quoted by Reuters in their article on the Treasury Committee’s recommendations for overhauling of the UK’s anti-money laundering and anti-financial crime defences.  On the implications of the Committee’s recommendations for banks, Anna says: “From the perspective of banks, the report may be a sobering read in that it calls for more aggressive FCA enforcement action by reference to the larger fines imposed by U.S. regulators for money laundering and sanctions breaches”.  Anna also comments on the Committee’s recommendation that the government establish centralised lists of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs): “The report does not address the broader problems with this database proposal” she added. “The concept of a PEP is not consistently defined by commercial operators, which already have an economic incentive to interpret PEPs as broadly as possible. There is also an increased risk with non-public commercial PEP lists of individuals being mistakenly identified as PEPs based on inaccurate information,” she said.   Read more