As part of international efforts to stop money laundering by criminal organizations and money transfers by terrorist groups, the government is preparing a new bill that it hopes to submit to a regular Diet session next year.
The bill to prevent distribution of criminal proceeds is likely to distress lawyers because it will require that they report to police any information acquired during their examination of clients' financial and real-estate transactions that smacks of money laundering. The bill strikes at the lifeline of the legal profession — the mutual trust between lawyers and clients. The government must rack its brain to find ways acceptable to both lawyers and the people who hire them.
Drafting of the bill was prompted by recommendations made in 2003 by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, an intergovernmental body. FATF, comprising member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, was established by the 1989 G7 summit in Paris. The recommendations said that not only financial institutions but also "lawyers, notaries, other independent legal professionals and accountants should be required to report suspicious transactions" such as repeat deposits and withdrawals of large amounts of money in a short time "to the financial intelligence unit (FIU)."