HMRC crack down on unlawful estate agents

Dozens of estate agents have been fined more than £500,000 for breaching anti-money laundering requirements, HM Revenue and Customs announced today.

HMRC today named the 68 estate agents that have been fined a total of £519,645 for not complying with rules designed to stop criminals laundering money from illegal activity.

The fines followed the first prosecution of an estate agent for trading despite not registering with HMRC, to ensure compliance with money laundering regulations.

Felix Uwuigbe, director of Century House Estates Ltd in London, was sentenced to 120 hours of unpaid community service and banned from acting as an estate agent for two years after he was convicted of trading for three months while unregistered.

Nick Sharp, Deputy Director of Economic Crime at HMRC said: “We are determined to create a level playing field for businesses who play by the rules. That means taking action against the minority of businesses who fail to fulfil their legal responsibilities under the money laundering regulations.

“Money laundering is not a victimless crime. Our regulations are there to protect businesses from those criminals who would prey on their services to wash their dirty money.

“Serious and organised crime costs the UK billions of pounds every year and our anti-money laundering supervision is a vital tool in combatting that.”

The full list published this time round sees 175 businesses receiving penalties totalling £2,180,708.

This follows the last round, published in May, which saw 147 businesses, including 41 estate agents, receive penalties totalling almost £800,000.

This latest round of penalties also sees the first business in the arts sector being fined.

HMRC is currently investigating a number of other cases of businesses failing to register whilst trading, which could lead to prison sentences of up two years and an unlimited fine.

The full list of business can be found on HMRC’s website – Businesses that have not complied with the regulations (2021 to 2022) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

To check if your businesses needs to be registered visit Who needs to register for AML supervision - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). You can register for supervision at Online registration system - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Report unregistered businesses to HMRC at Report fraud to HMRC - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

BACKGROUND:

HMRC is one of 25 Anti-Money Laundering (AML) supervisors in the UK. HMRC delivers its supervisory responsibility through its Economic Crime Supervision (ECS) teams.

HMRC helps ensure that businesses comply with the current Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (MLRs) and have systems and processes in place to protect themselves and their services from being exploited for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing. HMRC currently supervises around 29,000 businesses across nine different sectors:

• Money Service Businesses (MSBs)
• Accountancy Service Providers (ASPs)
• Trust or Company Service Providers (TCSPs)
• Estate Agency Businesses (EABs)
• Letting Agency Businesses (LABs)
• Art Market Participants (AMPs)
• High Value Dealers (HVDs)
• Bill Payment Service Providers
• IT and Digital Payment Service Providers