As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Something is about to happen that some have requested for a long time. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the inter-governmental body which takes the lead in the global fight against money laundering, and which is the inspiration behind the European anti-money laundering legislation, is planning a project to look into the vulnerabilities of legal professionals regarding money laundering and terrorist financing.

So what? you might ask. Well, up until now, the FATF has been open to the claim that it had no evidence about the involvement of the legal profession in money laundering, and had therefore promoted an elaborate legal edifice to deal with something that it didn’t know was happening. I myself have taunted them on this very matter. It was a strong suit for those who thought that the money laundering laws went too far, to say: but where is the evidence? Now the FATF is going to look for the evidence.

Its Working Group on Typologies (in plain speak, its evidence committee) has produced a paper. To its credit, it admits its previous actions were taken on faith rather than facts, or rather: ‘It should be noted however that the FATF has not yet taken a systematic approach to study specifically the vulnerabilities of legal profession for ML [money laundering] and TF [terrorist financing]. Often this lack of material on the topic is cited to argue that the actual ML/TF risks of legal professionals are not fairly assessed.’ At last, they got it!

The aim now is to study the legal environment, gather case material, understand the regulatory gaps and challenges, identify red flags indicators - all very proper aims. You might question the neutrality of the future report, though, when one of the aims is to ‘study the specific services/expertise offered by legal professionals and what makes them attractive to criminals’. Isn’t that assuming from the start something which the report is supposed to be investigating?

There are other signs of the existing views of the Working Group on Typologies creeping into the study’s framework. How about this: ‘The project focuses on the possible misuse of specific professional tools given to legal professionals in order to carry out their task of advising, defending and representing their clients. Examples are legal lawyer-client privilege, limited access for the authorities to information and documents held by legal professionals, obstacles for effective supervision of legal professionals, etc.’ Isn’t it a shame that those pesky lawyers have to be independent, and have to keep clients’ information confidential?

My organisation, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), has yet to consider this future project. My own view is that, if it will be carried out in an objective way, all sides should welcome facts and evidence being introduced into the never-ending debate. I hope that it shows only good things from the profession’s point of view. Is it too much to add that, if the evidence is clear that lawyers are not attractive to criminals, the Working Group on Typologies might begin the process of lifting the burden of compliance from the shoulders of European lawyers?

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents about one million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs