HM Treasury money laundering consultation response and UK FATF report
24 June 2022
HM Treasury’s consultation response document sets out amendments to the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (the Regulations), following a public consultation in July 2021.
Most of the measures mentioned in the consultation response will come into force on 1 September 2022, subject to Parliamentary approval. The Commission advises casino operators to familiarise themselves with applicable changes in advance of implementation.
Key changes relevant to the casino sector include:
Access to suspicious activity reports (SARs)
A clear legal gateway for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) supervisors to access, view and consider the quality of the content of SARs submitted by supervised populations, provided they are necessary to fulfil supervisory functions.
Proliferation financing
Amendments to regulations 16, 17 and 18 of the Regulations which will require Great Britain’s casino industry to complete their own risk assessments of proliferation financing, alongside their current risk assessments for money laundering and terrorist financing.
Reporting of discrepancies
Expansion of regulation 30A to introduce an ongoing requirement to report discrepancies in beneficial ownership information.
Information sharing and gathering
Expansion of regulation 52 to allow for wider information sharing and disclosure to a range of bodies, and to reduce the existing barriers to sharing information and intelligence that inhibit effective AML and/or CTF supervision.
Crypto asset firms
Information sharing requirements where crypto asset payments are accepted.
FATF publishes follow-up UK FATF Report
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) follow up report (opens in new tab) on the United Kingdom's (UK) compliance with FATF’s anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing requirements has been published.
Key findings include the UK:
- addressing some of the technical compliance deficiencies identified in the UK’s 2018 Mutual Evaluation Report (opens in new tab)
- implementing new requirements where the FATF Recommendations have changed since the on-site visit in March 2018.
FATF will continue to monitor the UK’s improvements in areas where partial compliance was identified in the Mutual Evaluation and publish further updates in due course.