Solicitors who are approached by wealthy new clients should take greater care to ensure they are not facilitating kleptocracy, state capture or grand corruption, a new report recommends. Lawyers — particularly commercial firms in the City of London — are told it’s not good enough merely to comply with anti-money laundering rules; the real test should be whether their actions would be acceptable to the wider public.
The report was written by a taskforce on business ethics and the legal profession set up by the the Institute of Business Ethics, a charity that’s been working since 1986 to help organisations act with honesty and integrity. It was chaired by Guy Beringer KC (hon), former senior partner of Allen & Overy (pictured). On the latest edition of A Lawyer Talks, he tells me how solicitors can maintain and enhance the reputation of the profession as a whole by following the report’s recommendations on transparency, accessibility and accountability.
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