PENDING UK LEGISLATION ON CORPORATE REPORTING REFORM WILL OFFER EXPANDED INFORMATION FOR COMPLIANCE OFFICERS, BUT ARE THEY UP FOR THE CHALLENGE?

If you have taken a hard look at the "Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill 2022/2023," you know that the reforms on required information, needed in response to the widespread abuse of UK companies by money launderers and financial criminals, will be a valuable addition to your AML toolbox.

Unfortunately, UK and foreign lawyers whose clients use those entities for the purposes of committing various and sundry white-collar crimes will most likely resort to what we call sharp tactics to make your easy access to that important data difficult, and your efforts extremely tedious. Expect them to employ poorly handwritten information, use different fonts, and unusual applications and programs that may not properly translate to what exists on the Companies House website, because that's what I would do to insure that my clients' information was barely legible or readable, or will not turn up in your searches. Money launderers specialize in delivering Confusion to the Enemy.

Therefore, let me suggest that your data exploring using traditional tools will fail, and at that point, to extract what you are searching for will require artificial intelligence-enabled systems, featuring machine learning, for otherwise, you aren't going to find what you need, and that may put you at the mercy of Uk regulators, or even law enforcement agencies, who will uniformly advise you that the data your legacy program could not ferret out was there all along.

While some UK-based compliance officers may still object to my continued advocacy of AI/ML platforms, which I have been doing for the past six years, often to deaf ears, you may find out to your chagrin that you will need such systems to plow through all this disjointed, chaotic Companies House data. I rest my case.