The Hong Kong government has gazetted amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance (AMLO) to enhance Hong Kong’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) regulatory regime. The amendments will be introduced into the Legislative Council (LegCo) for first reading on 6 July 2022. Read more

At the moment, the FCA's only powers over crypto businesses which do not carry on investment, payment services, e-money or other UK regulated business come from its role as their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing supervisor. This will change in due course in respect of stablecoin businesses (with HMT consulting on bringing these into scope) and in respect of financial promotions of certain cryptoassets (both HMT and FCA are consulting on this). Read more

In this blog post, we round-up key forthcoming developments in the UK and at EU and International levels in financial services regulation which are expected to happen in February and March 2022. Read more

On 13 January 2022, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (the "FCDO") announced the publication of the UK's first post-Brexit annual sanctions report (the "Report"). Read more

In Tam Sze Leung & Ors v Commissioner of Police [2021] HKCFI 3118, a judicial review case, the Court of First Instance found the longstanding practice of the Hong Kong Police in effecting an informal freeze against bank accounts through the use of “letters of no consent” (LNCs) (the No Consent Regime) to be unconstitutional. Read more

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has recently issued its Discussion Paper on Crypto-assets and Stablecoins, setting out the regulatory landscape globally and in other jurisdictions, as well as the current landscape in Hong Kong, and how it believes the Hong Kong regulatory framework should be expanded to cover payment-related stablecoins. Read more

Welcome to the Winter 2021 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters. Our update now covers a number of jurisdictions. Read more

Since 10 January 2021, cryptoasset exchange providers and custodian wallet providers with operations in the UK have been required to register with, and be supervised for, anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) purposes by the FCA. For crypto businesses which do not carry on any investment, payment services, e-money or other UK regulated business, this relatively limited regime is the main tool currently available to UK financial services regulators in this emerging sector. Read more