Two weeks ago, the Gazette reported that Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith (in a speech to the International Bar Association in San Francisco) had repeated the claim that solicitors are failing to make nearly enough money laundering suspicious transaction reports (STRs) to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) (see [2003] Gazette, 25 September, 1).

Now we are told that a Law Society conference session on money laundering has advised: 'don't clog up the money laundering reporting line with defensive STRs'.

The NCIS cannot cope with the (presumably high) level of reporting by the profession.

We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

But which are we to believe? It was easy to predict that if regulators introduce a regime that threatens professionals (not just solicitors) with lengthy jail terms for falling foul of complex criminal offences (including failing to have a proper money laundering reporting system in place), and that repeatedly accuses solicitors of failing in their duty to make STRs, the net effect will be 'defensive' reporting.

David Kirk, Simons Muirhead & Burton, London