What you are required to do

The following information has been prepared for self-employed practising barristers and BSB entities that we supervise under the Money Laundering Regulations. Employed and unregistered barristers who work in organisations that are regulated by another supervisor under the Regulations should refer to the guidance published by the relevant supervisor. If you are unsure, please contact us at: [email protected]

Under Regulation 18 of the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Regulations self-employed barristers and BSB entities that carry out work that falls within the scope of the Regulations must take appropriate steps to identify and assess the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing to which their practice or business is subject.

In carrying out the risk assessment, you must take into account factors that are set out in Regulation 18, which include the type of services that you are engaged in, the geographic areas in which you operate, the type of services you deliver and how you deliver them.

You must also take into account any information we make available to you. Under Regulation 17, we are required to identify and assess the money laundering and terrorist financing risks associated with the Bar. We have published the following information for this purpose.

You must document the risk assessment and keep an up-to-date record in writing of the steps you have taken to identify the risks so that you can make it available to us upon request.

In addition to your practice risk assessment, Regulation 28 requires you to conduct Customer Due Diligence on a case-by-case basis, applying a risk-based approach. This must reflect your practice risk assessment and your assessment of the level of risk arising in the particular case. You must take into account factors including the purpose of an account, transaction or business relationship, the level of assets to be deposited by a client or the size of the transactions undertaken by the client, and the regularity and duration of the business relationship. Where relevant, the risk should be monitored on an ongoing basis.

Conducting Due Diligence on High-Risk Countries

Barristers and BSB entities undertaking work that is in scope of the Money Laundering Regulations are required to apply enhanced customer due diligence in relation to high risk third countries (HRTC).

A HRTC is defined as a country named on either of the following lists published by the Financial Action Task Force as they have effect from time to time:

  1. High-Risk Jurisdictions subject to a Call for Action
  2. Jurisdictions under Increase Monitoring

Further information can be found in HM Treasury’s Advisory Notice.

Our assessment of risk to the Bar

Whilst the Government, in its National Risk Assessment, assesses the risk of Money Laundering in the legal sector as high, we assess the risk for barristers and BSB entities to be low for the following reasons:

  • Practising barristers do not typically engage in conveyancing and only a very small minority act as Trust or Company Service Providers, which are the two services identified as at highest risk for money laundering in the National Risk Assessment.
  • Barristers and BSB entities are prevented by the rules in the BSB Handbook from holding client money or managing their clients’ affairs.
  • The majority of instructions are referred by solicitors or other relevant persons under the Money Laundering Regulations, who are obliged to conduct their own Customer Due Diligence and therefore provide a first line of defence in assessing risk.

The most relevant area of risk is commonly referred to by the Government as “professional enablers” - The NRA defines a professional enabler as “an individual or organisation that is providing professional services that enable criminality. Their behaviour is deliberate, reckless, improper, dishonest and/or negligent through a failure to meet their professional and regulatory obligations.”- where independent legal professionals are complicit, knowingly or unknowingly, can facilitate the laundering of money, by:

  • helping to create complexity such as setting up networks of corporate structures to acquire illicit funds and provide anonymity for the criminal;
  • through their involvement, giving an appearance of respectability; and/or
  • through conducting sham litigation.

In making this assessment, we have drawn on the sources of information shown below and our supervisory work. However, you should always consider whether the risk in an individual instruction that you receive is consistent with this assessment and your individual practice risk assessment.

National Risk Assessment 2025

Legal services are assessed as high risk for money laundering and low risk for terrorist financing.

On 17 July 2025, HM Treasury published its latest National Risk Assessment. We encourage everyone to read it. This assessment sets out how the key money laundering and terrorist financing risks have changed since the last NRA was published in 2020. In particular, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there has been an increase in convergence between money laundering with kleptocracy and sanctions evasion. It says that the threat from money laundering and terrorist financing continues to evolve, shaped by new technologies such as AI, geopolitical tensions, and the increasing sophistication of criminal and terrorist networks. 

For barristers, chambers staff and BSB entities, it provides an important insight into common predicate offences that generate criminal funds and highlights trends since 2020 (including cybercrime, organised immigration crime and tax evasion).

It sets out how legal services may be exploited by organised criminals seeking to launder illicit funds by leveraging the legitimacy and the high reputation of the UK professional services sector. 

Professional services are attractive to criminals as a means to create and operate corporate structures, invest and transfer funds to disguise their origin and lend layers of legitimacy to their operations.

The legal sector services most at risk of exploitation by criminals are conveyancing, trust and company services and client accounts. The NRA highlights that where legal professionals are complacent, take a ‘tick box’ approach to compliance, or lack sector-specific knowledge and/or training on the money laundering threat, the risk of the services provided being exploited increases.

Whilst contentious litigation is not in scope of the Money Laundering Regulations, sham litigation has been raised as a risk with the UK court system being vulnerable to exploitation. Money could be laundered when criminals, often those from overseas jurisdictions, agree to sue each other in the English courts, with the payment of damages being used to launder their funds. They can also arrange to bring cases against themselves using sham companies.

NCA National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime

The assessment provides a single picture of the threat to the UK from serious and organised crime.

The assessment highlights Money Laundering as a key threat.

Professional enablers continue to be used to conceal and move criminal assets. The use of cryptocurrencies to launder money is widely established. Cryptocurrencies are used to launder the proceeds of fraud and cybercrime as well as to pay for drug importations.

UK corporate structures continue to enable money laundering due to vulnerabilities in their creation and oversight. Potential indicators of money laundering via corporate structure misuse include multiple companies being registered at the same residential address and the creation of a large number of dormant companies.

The main method used to launder the proceeds of corruption continues to be through offshore corporate entities and trusts. Professional enablers providing company formation, accounting, legal and real estate advisory services facilitate money laundering on behalf of corrupt politically exposed persons.

Proliferation Financing

The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022 came into force on 1 September 2022. This brings into effect a new requirement for barristers and BSB entities to assess their risk exposure to proliferation financing (PF).

On 23 September 2021, the UK published its first National Risk Assessment of Proliferation Financing (PF). It says that the proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons and their delivery systems greatly destabilises counter-proliferation efforts worldwide and poses a significant threat to UK national security. However, the UK has a robust counter-proliferation legal framework. A key focus is the implementation of UK and UN sanctions regimes on North Korea, Iran and chemical weapons activity. These measures limit opportunities for proliferating actors to exploit the UK to obtain financing for CBRN capabilities.

The PF threats that the UK is most likely to be exposed to relate to the UK’s central role as a global provider of financial and corporate services in support of the legitimate trade in sensitive items, even items that are not procured from the UK, as well as the ability for actors to establish shell companies in the UK to conceal a wider network of PF-related activity. To a lesser extent, the UK may also face PF threats as a jurisdiction where proliferators can raise revenue and procure proliferation sensitive and other dual-use items (goods, software, technology, and diagrams which can be used for both civil and military applications).

Further guidance on conducting a PF risk assessment is included in the Joint Legal Sector Guidance.

Additional resources

When preparing your risk assessment, you should have regard to the Joint Legal Sector Guidance.

The following information will also assist:

If you have any comments or questions about this page, please contact us.

Last updated 03 Nov 2025