Our firm is obliged to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) laws and regulations which impose on us compliance rules to obtain clear evidence of our client’s identity. We are committed in the prevention of money-laundering and the financing of terrorism in our business practices and transactions. Money laundering is the process of disguising the financial proceeds of crime to conceal their illegal origin. The financing of terrorism is any kind of financial support to those who attempt to encourage, plan or engage in terrorism. Everything Legal B.V. collects and reviews information on our counterparties to establish their identity, check that they are not considered high-risk, which means checking whether counterparties are based in FATF high-risk jurisdictions and to maintain an understanding of the nature and legitimacy of all our counterparties businesses.

Everything Legal B.V. has also established Know Your Counterparty (KYC) procedures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. These procedures allow us to identify every organisation that we deal with, to understand the legitimacy of our business relationships and to identify and react to unusual or suspicious activity. We will always require evidence of your identity and address. To comply with the imposed compliance requirements in many cases we will have to establish your present business background. This information needs to be supported by evidencing documents, data and reliable sources of information. One of the most important compliance requirements we have to meet is to also establish the original source of the money you use to fund a company, entity or foundation.

Therefore, when we act for you, we are obliged to ask you to provide us with proof of your identity and address. We may even have to do this even though we have acted for you before. We may also have to ask you to provide further information about transactions which you instruct us to undertake on your behalf. We hope that you will not find these requests to be intrusive and that you will appreciate why this is necessary. These measures ensure that criminals and terrorists do not try to use us as a way to launder money derived from criminal activities. One of the ways that we do this is by being absolutely certain who we are acting for and precisely what the purpose of any transaction is. Failing to spot money laundering when we should, can lead to us facing criminal charges and therefore we take this issue very seriously.

Private Individuals
When acting for you we are required by law to check your identity and we may also wish to confirm information about your credit status. Also we may ask you to supply original documents as confirmation of your identity, address or both which we will use along with any electronic checks we perform. Any documents provided to us will be recorded and copied for audit purposes as part of our Anti Money Laundering requirements. Suitable items for the proof of identity could be a current passport or driving licence, and for the address, a utility bill or bank statement may suffice. We may also require supporting evidence of the source of any money involved and full details of any third party to whom you may instruct us to send funds.

Corporate and other business clients
Before we can act on behalf of the directors or the company we will need to see the certain documents of your company, foundation or entity together with a suitable resolution confirming that the persons who are representing the company are properly authorised. Additionally, for all the directors, we must see proof of identity. Suitable items for the proof of identity could be a current passport or driving licence, and for the address, a utility bill or bank statement may suffice. Also we may require supporting evidence of the source of any money involved and full details of any third party to whom you may instruct us to send funds.