The UK's new co-ordinator of anti-money-laundering regulators, the 15-man Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision, has now acquired the necessary legal powers and will begin operations on Monday.

OPBAS is a subdivision of the Financial Conduct Authority and receives its funding from fees that it levies on so-called "professional body supervisors." These bodies are: the Association of Accounting Technicians; the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants; the Association of International Accountants; the Association of Taxation Technicians; the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives; the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants; the Chartered Institute of Taxation; the Council for Licensed Conveyancers; the Faculty of Advocates; the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury; the General Council of the Bar/Bar Standards Board; the General Council of the Bar of Northern Ireland; the Insolvency Practitioners Association; the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers; the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales; the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland; the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland; the Institute of Financial Accountants; the International Association of Bookkeepers; the Law Society/Solicitors' Regulation Authority; the Law Society of Northern Ireland; and the Law Society of Scotland.

OPBAS has powers to:

• monitor the activities of the 22 bodies;
• impose financial penalties on supervisors if money laundering regulations are breached;
• publicly censure or ask the Treasury to 'remove' professional bodies that do not comply with the UK's Money Laundering Regulations; and
• work with a reformed Money Laundering Advisory Committee (MLAC) to simplify the anti-money laundering rules that apply to different industries and approve one set of anti-money laundering guidelines for each sector.

Caroline Day, a criminal litigation partner at Kingsley Napley, told Compliance Matters: “The UK has one of the highest number of professional bodies responsible for supervising money laundering (control) and the Government has charged OPBAS with driving up standards and ensuring quality and consistency across the board. This new watchdog is designed to be a supervisor of supervisors. Its brief is to simplify the AML rules that apply to different sectors, close any gaps and prevent any loopholes from appearing. Although long-planned, OPBAS comes into operation during a wave of recent Government announcements about economic crime. Whether it will add unnecessary layers of bureaucratic supervision remains to be seen."

Delegates at the MLROs.com conference in London yesterday were sceptical about the effect that the new body is likely to have.