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More than one in ten law firms assessed for compliance with government money laundering obligations brought in last June have been referred to the disciplinary process, a proportion which if extrapolated to the wider profession would amount to over 1,200 firms.

Two partners at a high street firm have each been fined £35,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for multiple accounts rule breaches – very much at the higher end of the financial penalties it usually hands out. One was also found to have breached the money laundering regulations and both failed to act with integrity.

A solicitor who transferred nearly £1.3m to an offshore bank account in Belize has been suspended for a year for breaches of the money laundering regulations and accounts rules. A disciplinary tribunal said she have have unwittingly facilitated the movement of monies during the course of a suspected fraud.

A solicitor’s convictions for money laundering have been overturned by the Court of Appeal in a case involving corrupt payments linked to a multi-million dollar UN medical aid contract for the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was convicted despite the judge finding him unfit to be cross-examined.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has opened a second front in its campaign for full separation from the Law Society by appealing to the Treasury to intervene over the issue of money laundering. The Ministry of Justice is expected to reveal its plans on separation after the EU referendum.