BREAKING NEWS

Law aimed at curbing terror financing, money laundering goes into effect

An amendment to a law creating much more government oversight over lawyers and accountants and placing heavy new obligations on those professions relating to business which could intersect with terror financing or money laundering went into effect on Wednesday.
The new law creates new obligations on lawyers and accountants to scrutinize the identity and business purposes of their clients in at least five distinct areas.
Those areas include: real estate, buying and selling a business, administering and operating assets and funds, handling funds relating to corporate administration and establishing corporations or trusts.
These new obligations apply to “every lawyer and accountant who undertake or are requested to undertake one of the actions listed” in the law for a client, according to a Justice Ministry statement.
Essentially, the obligations require lawyers to dig deeper into their clients’ interests in making a given deal happen and in the financial methods their clients use to effectuate the deal.
Also on Wednesday, the Authority for Preventing Terror-Financing and Money-Laundering publicized official guidance for professionals to comply with the law, including giving nuts and bolts examples of deals which look legitimate, but can be exploited to secretly