Lexbridge has a practice area providing legal support to countries in anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), including in anti-corruption and countering other forms of financial crime. Our multi-disciplinary team includes highly experienced lawyers with expertise in international law, domestic law and AML/CFT; legislative drafting; policy development; forensic accounting; criminal asset confiscation litigation including conviction and non conviction based forfeiture, financial investigations, criminal asset investigation and litigation capacity-building and training.
Lexbridge has dedicated expertise and demonstrated experience in the AML/CFT sector in the Pacific, with established relationships and networks across the region. Our team members have worked with a range of legal, regulatory, policy and operational agencies in the domestic and international sphere. This includes decades of experience assisting justice and other departments to develop legal policy reform, and assisting operational agencies to develop procedures and apply laws more effectively. We have worked extensively for and with the Australian Government and other governments, including multiple governments in the Pacific, as well as with entities like the Asia / Pacific Group on Money Laundering.
Within the Lexbridge team we have extensive expertise and experience in AML/CFT legislative drafting, with over three decades of experience in this field. In particular, we have significant experience in assisting Pacific Island countries to develop legislation, subordinate instruments and guidance materials to implement the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards. We are skilled at liaising and consulting with legal, policy, regulatory and operational stakeholders to produce high quality legislative outputs, often under challenging circumstances and to tight deadlines. We also are experienced in offering practical training to stakeholders on implementation.
If you are interested in seeking Lexbridge assistance, please contact us at: enquiries@lexbridgelawyers.com
Lexbridge is leading the development of an exciting project to develop a model anti-money laundering (AML) and proceeds of crime asset confiscation framework (the Model Framework). The Model Framework is intended to reflect best practice legal standards and to be tailored for adoption and implementation by Pacific Island countries.
In particular, the Model Framework will be perfectly suited to help countries meet the recent changes to the Financial Action Task Force Recommendations announced in October 2023, which require countries to have policies and operational frameworks that prioritise asset recovery and to establish non-conviction-based confiscation regimes in their legal systems.
The key objective of our project is to assist Pacific Island countries in their efforts to combat the threat of money laundering linked to corruption, serious and organised crime. If adopted and implemented by a majority of Pacific Island countries, the Model Framework would potentially be the most significant advancement in the Pacific Region to combat all financially motivated crime types for the past 20 years. It would provide multiple positive flow-on effects to the region, and would be a highly effective tool to combat corruption in the region and foster stronger regional cooperation against transnational crime and illicit financial flows with particular benefits for interoperability between jurisdictions. Learn more here about the Model Framework project.
