Anti-Money Laundering
From 1 July 2018 Home Transfer Centre, along with all other Law Firms in New Zealand are required to comply with the requirements of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009.
The Act requires us to obtain as much information as possible to mitigate the risk of being used to launder money or finance terrorism and to identify potentially suspicious activities. We fully agree with the purpose of the Act.
Before we can act for you, we require you to provide documents in order to verify your identity. To make this simple we include current ID and proof of your address in our client profile forms. In addition, we require proof of where money is coming from for all purchases. We will guide you through this process and let you know what documentation is required. We are unable to pay out any funds from our Trust Account until the correct documentation and information has been provided to us.
All documents provided to us will be held electronically in our secure system and will not be released to any third parties unless authorised by you or under the terms of the Act or by a judgment of a New Zealand Court.
Please do not be offended if we ask for more information or additional documentation. We are legally required to obtain this information from all clients, even those who have been clients for many years. If we are not able to collect and verify this information, the legislation precludes Home Transfer Centre from being able to act for you.