Hamilton law firm Foster & Milroy have been fined $60,000 for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AMT\/CFT) Act offences.<\/p>\n
Department of Internal Affairs AMT\/CFT Director Serge Sablyak described the offending as “prolonged, intentional and systemic”.<\/p>\n
“Between March 2022 and March 2025, Foster & Milroy repeatedly failed to meet their legal obligations under the Act,” said Sablyak. <\/p>\n
It admitted failures to undertake a compliant risk assessment, to\u00a0establish, implement, or\u00a0maintain\u00a0an AML\/CFT programme, and to\u00a0maintain\u00a0proper records, and wilfully obstructing an AML\/CFT supervisor in the exercise of its powers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Foster & Milroy also wilfully obstructed the Department’s investigators from exercising their statutory powers by refusing to respond to our notices and only responding to parts of others,” said Sablyak.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses are our first line of defence against money\u00a0laundering\u00a0which is why it is so important for\u00a0regulated entities\u00a0to\u00a0meet the\u00a0Act\u2019s\u00a0obligations.\u00a0Where there is a pattern of non-compliance or deliberate attempts to\u00a0obstruct or\u00a0mislead, we take decisive action, whether through civil enforcement or criminal\u00a0prosecution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCriminals\u00a0with money laundering in mind\u00a0target businesses they believe have weak systems they can exploit.\u00a0Law firms are particularly vulnerable\u00a0because they are trusted, and\u00a0criminals\u00a0leverage\u00a0that trust by\u00a0using\u00a0their broad range of services to\u00a0conceal\u00a0the proceeds of\u00a0their\u00a0offending.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0why\u00a0failures\u00a0to\u00a0adhere to, or\u00a0implement,\u00a0AML\/CFT obligations\u00a0can have far-reaching consequences.”<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including US forces seize another vessel, and what\u2019s unusual about this Anzac Day. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hamilton law firm Foster & Milroy have been fined $60,000 for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,9001,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-394995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-hamilton-waikato","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}