Real Estate Agencies

Several aspects of the real estate industry make it appealing for possible abuse by money launderers or financiers of terrorism. A number of fundamental strategies, including the use of sophisticated loans or credit finance, the employment of non-financial specialists, the use of corporate vehicles, and others, were discovered from the case studies offered throughout the research for the FATF-led project 'Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Through the Real Estate Sector'.

Real estate remains one of the most sought ways to launder money by taking advantage of large sums of money being transferred from one source to another, leading towards creating apparent safe investments through illegitimate transfers of financial assets. About one third of confiscated illegal assets are typically referred to real estate². In the UK and many other countries, being compliant additionally means that real estate agents need to keep records of all their customer due diligence measures (i.e., customer identification documents, AML check results and risk assessments) for a minimum of 5 years starting from the date of the end of a business relationship or the completion of the transaction date. In this manner, real estate agencies can prove their compliance with AML regulations when any of their clients is investigated in order to protect their businesses from potentially damaging consequences³.