Steve McCabe – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2015-12-08.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what legal and regulatory obligations apply to members of the public identified by banks as Politically Exposed Persons; and what information his Department holds on how such people are identified by banks.

Harriett Baldwin

At present, only foreign Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) are subject to the Money Laundering Regulations (2007). The Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which will be transposed into national law by June 2017, requires enhanced customer due diligence (EDD) measures to also be extended to domestic PEPs. We intend to interpret the Directive in a way that continues to allow banks to apply a “risk-based approach” to both the identification and application of EDD measures. This involves treating UK PEPs on the basis of risk when undertaking due diligence measures. We intend to set out this view in our consultation on transposition of the Directive which will be published in early 2016.