The summer months have seen a quickening of pace in news relating to lawyer involvement in anti-money laundering procedures. Although there have been times in the past when the work of our CCBE anti-money laundering committee has lessened, its agenda is now overflowing.

As I have mentioned before, the European commission is undertaking a review of the Third Money Laundering Directive with a view to publishing a report at the beginning of 2012. Stakeholders - including the CCBE - are therefore being consulted at the moment for their views, which for us is particularly important in the contentious area of lawyer reporting.

This will lead in due course to a proposed Fourth Money Laundering Directive, expected in 2012. Part of the review involves consideration of the report into lawyer duties which was commissioned by the European commission from Deloittes, and published earlier this year.

The CCBE is in the process of finalising its response to this report.

At the same time, international discussions are taking place around the revision of the standards promoted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is the inter-governmental body whose purpose is the development and promotion of national and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The FATF has issued a second consultation paper (published in June, deadline 16 September 2011) asking for views on a variety of issues, including the risk-based approach in supervision, beneficial ownership, and Politically Exposed Persons.

That means we are obliged to deal with two consultations at once.

We are disappointed with the FATF. Recently, at the same time as the American Bar Association (ABA) and Japanese Federation of Bar Associations, we wrote to complain about their failure to consult the legal profession more regularly about progress on their revision programme.

The Americans have their own troubles. The ABA has been battling a bill sponsored by the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Carl Levin, to promote greater transparency in benefial ownership. It has been introduced in two previous sessions, and got nowhere, and has now, just at the beginning of August, been introduced again.

As you may know, the USA, despite being a member of the FATF, has never introduced legislation in relation to lawyer reporting. The Levin-Grassley bill, called the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act, would – according to its sponsors – 'bring the United States into compliance with international standards issued by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering requiring the disclosure of corporate beneficial ownership information and make US domestic practices consistent with its foreign policy'.

Under its anti-money laundering safeguards, the bill would 'require paid formation agents to establish anti-money laundering programs to guard against supplying US corporations or limited liability companies that facilitate misconduct. Attorneys using paid formation agents would be exempt from this requirement'.

Although it is too early to know the ABA’s response to the new bill, it used the same arguments against its predecessor as we traditionally employ against our own money laundering legislation in the EU.

In particular, it said that because the definition of 'formation agents' in the legislation appeared to include many lawyers engaged in the practice of law, it would impose anti-money laundering compliance requirements on the legal profession and treat lawyers as though they were banks.

Like the albatross from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, it looks as though this kind of legislation is going to hang around our necks for a long time to come.

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies