HOWARTH & SRODON NOTARIES PUBLIC - FINANCIAL SANCTIONS POLICY AND PROCEDURES 2025
Introduction:
This financial sanctions policy and procedures document sets out the procedures We follow to comply with the UK financial sanctions regime. We appreciate that it is essential to comply with the legislation on sanctions. Failure to do so could result in serious penalties for our practice.
We work as partners in a notary practice, so the responsibility for compliance with the financial sanctions regime falls to us. We will review the processes we have in place for compliance with the financial sanctions regime annually.
Risk Assessment:
We have included an assessment of the risk that our practice could be exposed to persons or regimes subject to financial sanctions as part of our anti-money laundering firm-wide risk analysis. This policy has been developed in response to that risk assessment and we will review this policy annually. Following our review of that risk assessment we will make any appropriate changes.
Due Diligence:
The level of sanctions due diligence we apply to new and current clients is appropriate to the size and nature of the risk involved in the matter in question. We either use new client and matter risk assessment forms to ensure a record of the decision on sanctions is made or alternatively we record the results of sanctions checks when we complete our note on the matter for our Registers.
Our sanctions due diligence process is:
- Establish the identity of the client and appearer (if different). Our obligations under the Notary Practice Rules (NPR) assist here as we have to identify any persons intervening in documents we notarise
- We identify the ultimate beneficial ownership of corporate clients
- Put the names into the Office of Financial Sanctions implementation (OFSI) consolidated search engine to check to see if the individuals and entities are designated persons, as appropriate.
- Carefully scrutinise the information received from the OFSI consolidated search engine.
- Carry out the same measures for counterparties to the transaction if we consider appropriate
- Our screening process includes fuzzy matching.
- Considering whether the work we are being asked to do falls within the general prohibitions in the OFSI Russian sanctions guidance.
We conduct screening before we undertake any work for an individual or entity, where we consider that individual or entity is high risk for sanctions, for example they are based in a high-risk jurisdiction as specified by the Financial Action Task Force or they are established in a country that is subject to the UK sanctions regime currently.
We repeat the screening every six months for those clients whose matters extend beyond six months which is rare in our areas of practice.
We have signed up for OFSI alerts and check the names of all newly designated persons against our current client list.
How we deal with false positives:
- If a prospective or current client’s name appears on the OFSI consolidated list, we check to see if the result is a false positive.
- The OFSI consolidated list helpfully gives additional information regarding the sanctioned individual. For example, it often specifies country of residence and date of birth.
- We routinely obtain a copy of our client’s passport and a proof of address document to comply with my obligations under the NPR, so we check the additional information in the OFSI consolidated list against the information we have in the passport and proof of address document.
- If we are still unclear, we ask the client to confirm their sanctioned status and to provide further information. There is no tipping off offence committed when we ask for this information. When someone is sanctioned they will be aware of their sanctioned status. It is in the public domain.
Reporting Suspected Matches:
If we have investigated a potential match and have been unable to clear it as a false positive, we will take one of the following steps:
- Decline to act
- Cease to act if we have already started acting for the client and they have become sanctioned during the transaction
- Inform OFSI as necessary, and we will look at the OFSI website for guidance on when they need to be informed
- Apply for a licence from OFSI to act for the client, or consider whether our acting for the client will fall within a general licence in place from OFSI at that time
- We do not have a client account, however, and rarely if ever take funds from clients in advance of fees, so do not expect to have to freeze the funds of a designated individual in our practice.
- If we consider that the positive match gives rise to a suspicion under the Proceeds of Crime Act, we will make a suspicious activity report to the National Crime Agency. If that is the case, we will take care not to inform the client in case of tipping off.
Review
This policy and procedures document was drafted in July 2025 and will be reviewed annually or more frequently on a change in the law and regulation on sanctions.
LAURA BERENICE SRODON
HOWARTH & SRODON NOTARIES PUBLIC
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