Regulated professionals need to be especially diligent when reviewing documents from clients that are in foreign languages following the new anti-money-laundering (AML) rules that came into force on 26th June according to David Clarke, the former head of the UK National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). David is encouraging firms to review their controls for checking the veracity of foreign language documents that a customer presents for due diligence purposes and says, “Criminals who launder money need to hide the true source of their wealth when they engage a professional. They do this by lying and presenting documents that are false, stolen or contain information that has been deliberately mistranslated.”

There are cases where information missed in translation has caused big headaches for individuals as Mr Jacques de Groote, former director of the IMF and CEO of the World Bank found to his cost.