ICAEW members have reported receiving emails about anti-money laundering supervision from HMRC’s economic crime supervision unit. HMRC has confirmed to ICAEW that these emails were sent in error and it is investigating what went wrong.
The emails are not a scam but were intended for a targeted group of businesses supervised by HMRC for anti-money laundering (AML) purposes and should not have been sent to agents supervised by ICAEW or other approved supervisors.
Pending further information from HMRC, the emails can be ignored.
The text of the email is as follows:
“Your Anti Money Laundering Online Supervision account shows that you do not have risk assessments, written policies, controls or processes in place to help protect your business from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing. You have previously been sent secure communication messages alerting you of this.
As a registered business with HMRC, you have a regulatory obligation to have these in place. If a compliance check is done on your business and you do not have these in place, you will be issued with a penalty.
If you already have these documents in place, but have not updated your online account to confirm this, you need to do so.
If you don’t have these documents in place, you must prepare them and then update your online account to confirm this to avoid penalties.
Update your account by logging into your Anti Money Laundering Supervision account on GOV.UK and ticking the risk assessment and policies/procedures questions. You do not need to send us copies unless requested to.
Go to GOV.UK and search 'register or renew your money laundering supervision with HMRC'. You’ll need the Government Gateway User ID and Password that you used when you registered.
If you’ve lost or forgotten your User ID and/or password, please contact mlrcit@hmrc.gov.uk for help to reset it.”
HMRC has now issued a follow-up correction email, the copy to which can be found below:
"We're sorry that we sent you an email about urgent Anti Money Laundering Supervision earlier today. We sent this by mistake, there is no need to take any action, please delete that email. We are sorry for any confusion or concern that this may have caused."
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