Where legal professional privilege ends and the duty to report suspected money laundering begins — and the offences waiting for a solicitor who draws the line in the wrong place.
A solicitor who suspects a client of money laundering is pulled in two directions at once, and the Proceeds of Crime Act decides which duty prevails. This chapter starts with that core tension and the key bodies — the NCA, which receives suspicious activity reports, and the SRA, which supervises compliance — before setting out the two categories of legal professional privilege, the elements each requires, and who owns the privilege, who can waive it and how it can be lost. It then works through the s.330 failure to disclose offence in the regulated sector, the privileged circumstances exception that can lift the reporting duty, the crime/fraud rule that strips that exception away, and the tipping off offence that restricts what can be said once a report has been made. Finally, it covers how a report seeking a defence operates — the NCA's consent period, the moratorium and the protection against breach of confidentiality claims — along with the MLRO's obligations, the substantive laundering offences and the regulatory consequences of inadequate systems.
