Consent removal risks criminalising ordinary business, lawyers warn

If the UK consent regime, which, uniquely internationally, protects reporters of money laundering suspicion ahead of a transaction from prosecution, were abolished, it would have to be replaced by a similar system with equivalent safeguards, says the Law Society of England and Wales. Otherwise, in the absence of substantive change to the primary money laundering offences, “vast swathes of ordinary business” would be criminalised.