Finance SIG - New Federal Regulations on Client Identification and Verification
Description
In October 2006 the federal government introduced Bill C-25, which made a series of amendments to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. One of the amendments to the Act was to enhance the client identification, record-keeping and reporting measures applicable to financial institutions and financial intermediaries.
The regulations purport to regulate how lawyers, and others, should identify and verify the identity of clients. The regulations were published (in final form) in December 2007 and, with respect to the legal profession, come into force in December 2008.
Jim Varro will discuss the new regulations and the implications they have for law firms.
Jim Varro is Policy Counsel in the Policy and Tribunals Department of the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1983. Jim is secretary to the Law Society’s Professional Regulation Committee and Governance Task Force. He also served as secretary to the Law Society’s Emerging Issues Committee and was secretary to the Society’s Task Force on the Rules of Professional Conduct, which prepared new Rules adopted in 2000. As a Law Society staff liaison to the Chief Justice of Ontario’s Advisory Committee on Professionalism, he served on its working group on the definition of professionalism and serves on its working group on professionalism colloquia. He is policy counsel to the Federation of Law Societies of Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering Committee, and in that capacity appeared before House of Commons and Senate Committees on review of money laundering legislation in 2006. Jim is a member of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility