Amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill

On 1 May, Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan announced that the government would not oppose a Labour amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill currently going through parliament that will introduce public ownership registers in Britain’s overseas territories.

The 14 overseas territories, including the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, will be forced to introduce the public registers by 2020 or have them imposed by the UK government. The amendment will not apply to the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man as Parliament cannot legislate for them, but Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell who introduced the amendment along with Labour MP Margaret Hodge hoped the crown dependencies would also embrace the registers.

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Are your staff aware of the reasonable procedures under the Criminal Finances Act?

The Criminal Finances Act, which came into force in September 2017, introduced the requirement for businesses to have reasonable procedures to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. If you do not feel that your organisation complies with the Criminal Finances Act, it is important to start a thorough risk assessment of all areas of your business operations. Organisations must also draw up an implementation plan that includes training on the Criminal Finances Act.

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Hundreds of thousands of workers in both regulated and nonregulated sector at risk of facilitating tax evasion

With the Criminal Finances Act now in full force, VinciWorks has been helping businesses prepare with their new course, Tax Evasion: Failure to Prevent. The new law doesn’t just affect the regulated sector; any business that doesn’t have reasonable procedures in place to prevent facilitation of tax evasion could find themselves prosecuted.

So just how prepared are we for the Criminal Finances Act? VinciWorks surveyed over 250 UK companies with a combined workforce of around 430,000 people to find out just how much tax evasion risk companies are exposing themselves to, and if they have started to take action to mitigate those risks.
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What you need to do now to prevent facilitation of tax evasion

From today, 30^th September 2017, the new Criminal Finances Act is in full legal force. The race is now on for all companies to ensure they have duly considered what reasonable procedures they have in place to prevent corporate facilitation of tax evasion.

If you haven’t done anything yet, don’t worry. It’s not too late, but it’s vital to start working now to ensure your business has a legal defence should the worst happen. Just like the age old saying that your first payment of every month should be to the insurance company, the first task on Monday’s agenda should be to figure out what your company needs to do to prevent tax evasion.

Read more: VinciWorks survey reveals staff at 1 in 4 companies unaware of financial crime policies

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On 30^th September 2017, the Criminal Finances Act comes into force, as does the requirement for businesses to have reasonable procedures to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. The law is broad and the net is wide; a business can be prosecuted if a contractor puts a client in touch with a dodgy accountant or the entire modus operandi of the business is to stash away taxable cash.

VinciWorks conducted a survey of 250 UK businesses to find out just how much tax evasion risk companies are exposing themselves to. A quarter of companies still do not have any policies in place to prevent financial crime and one in ten companies in the legal and financial services sector haven’t put in place a whistleblowing policy.
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The Criminal Finances Act, passed in April 2017, creates a new corporate criminal offence for failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. Under the new law, if an employee or a contractor helps someone evade their taxes, that business can be prosecuted for failing to prevent it from happening.

Implementing reasonable procedures to prevent tax evasion is a key defence against prosecution, but it requires a thorough risk assessment, a top-down commitment and a roll out of staff training. Procedures should be proportional to the risks faced, so a law or accounting firm who gives tax advice to their clients will come out as having a much higher risk.
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