Lawyers face threat of organised crime

By Jeremy FlemingSolicitors risk serious threats of violence from the world's most powerful international crime groups, and could be involved in up to half of the money laundering transactions reported last year to the National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS), it emerged this week.Disclosures to NCIS ballooned almost 30% to 18,408 last year -- but reports by solicitors stood at just 248, less than 2%.Half the disclosures involving laundering techniques would require the involvement of solicitors or accountants, Gavin Coles, senior strategic analyst with NCIS's economic crime unit, told the Gazette.Although solicitors may be involved unwittingly, Mr Coles said: 'We have made a clear distinction in the past between those who do and this unwittingly and those who don't, but we do want to draw attention to the fact that there are those who are well aware of what is going on and are knowingly providing a service to several criminal groups.'The highest level of organised criminals are attracted to solicitors because of their expertise, international contacts, the air of respectability they lend to transactions, and the capability of client accounts 'to deal with serious money.'He warned that he had witnessed two recent cases in which criminals had used UK solicitors' client accounts to launder funds, before finishing the sting by emptying the client account completely.Mr Coles added that blackmail methods were used by criminals against solicitors, threatening to make individual partners' or firms' positions untenable, and he said he knew of cases where serious threats of violence had been made against solicitors.Mr Coles said new money laundering legislation coming into force later this year increased the potential risk of prosecution for solicitors.Meanwhile, a threat assessment report to be published by NCIS this week will say that the Inland Revenue has noticed increasing involvement of solicitors and accountants in revenue frauds.The report is expected to say: 'It is not always easy to determine if the professionals have benefited from the fraud, or have been dupes.'A City fraud specialist said lawyers would expect most disclosures to come from banks, not law firms.