Money laundering offences

Specialists in the prevention and defence of money laundering offences

Prevention of money laundering

Our firm advises companies and even tax advisors on the prevention of money laundering. The extra-penal regulations are certainly complex, but after many years of analysis and training, we achieve a very high level of compliance by our clients, thus avoiding not only the infringement of the aforementioned regulations, but also the commission of the crime of money laundering.

Not surprisingly, the managing partner of the firm, Jaime Campaner, has been a member -since its constitution- of the Comité de Expertos de Compliance Certifica corresponding to the certification scheme of persons as “expert in the prevention of money laundering” (EPBC). It therefore assesses the suitability of the persons who are candidates to be qualified as EPBC. The latter is a natural person registered with the Executive Service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Offences (SEPBLAC), responsible for carrying out the external review and for issuing and signing a report on the appropriate policies and procedures in terms of due diligence, information, document retention, internal control, risk assessment and management, ensuring compliance with the relevant provisions and communication, in order to prevent and deter operations related to money laundering of the organisation for which it provides its services and which is considered a regulated entity according to the law on the prevention of money laundering.

Having overcome the Roman Empire’s conception of pecunia non olet (money does not smell), modern states under the rule of law, led by the Anglo-Saxon countries, have declared war on the proceeds of crime by introducing criminal policies based on zero tolerance for money produced by criminal activities. The aim is to discourage those who have committed a crime from profiting financially from its proceeds, i.e. profiting from or generating money. The principles follow the money and crime does not pay summarise the roadmap and the objective of the criminal policy of the states concerned. They follow the money of criminal origin by all possible means in order to confiscate it and thus prevent it from being lost in the legal circuit, sending the message to the participants that, apart from confiscation, committing crime will not only be unprofitable, but also cost them dearly.

The idea that only criminals launder assets or launder money must be banished. Any natural or legal person, from a private individual to a professional or even a financial institution, can participate in any of the stages of laundering money of criminal origin (placement, shadowing and integration) without knowing about it but could have been in a position to know about it if they had wanted to or if they had complied with sectoral and/or prevention regulations.

At Campaner Law we always advise companies to invest in prevention and to establish a culture of compliance with regulations in general and with money laundering regulations in particular. For this reason, our firm designs regulatory compliance programmes for companies, establishing effective measures for the prevention and detection of crimes within them, with special emphasis on the crime of money laundering.

Defence against money laundering

As a result of the above, our criminal lawyers are in the best possible position to defend accusations of money laundering in both its intentional and reckless form. The latter usually affects especially professionals (notaries, lawyers, tax advisors, managers) and, precisely, the duty of diligence required of the professional is determined by the extra-penal regulations that we handle with the utmost solvency.

The large influx of EU and non-EU foreigners in Mallorca and Ibiza has meant that members of the firm have defended both professionals who have previously advised foreign investors and foreign nationals in criminal proceedings for money laundering with multiple international ramifications.

The professional performance of the firm’s managing partner, Jaime Campaner, in the trial of the so-called Nóos case, where he defended a lawyer and tax advisor accused of money laundering for devising and setting up an international corporate structure, was described by Contexto magazine as follows:

« It was an honours exhibition. Schematic and rigorous with a little spicy seasoning:neither the United Kingdom nor Belize were or are “tax havens”. Shakespeare’s to be or not to be. Beluga caviar on a mother-of-pearl spoon. »

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