Anti-Money Laundering & Countering Finance of Terrorism Act 2009

As of 1^st October 2018 the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (the Act) came into effect and applies to all New Zealand accountancy firms, including PKF Dunedin.

The Act requires all accountancy firms to mitigate the risk of being used to facilitate money laundering and terrorism financing and to identify potentially suspicious activities. In order to do this, PKF Dunedin must collect and verify identity information about all prospective clients and most existing clients. In some cases, we must also collect and validate the client's source of wealth/funds and information about specific transactions.

PKF Dunedin will need to ask for the required information about identity either on instruction or over the next few months. We may use an electronic identity verification tool, however, we will also require you to provide further documents in order to manually verify your identity, such as a passport, driver licence or birth certificate. This means we have to meet you face to face and check the original ID against you, before taking a copy. If we cannot meet with you and verify this ourselves, the ID needs to be verified by a public notary or a lawyer. We are also required to verify your address and this can be done using a utility bill, bank statement or other document, sent to your address within the last three months.

Please don’t be concerned when we ask for more information or documents. We’re legally required to obtain this information from all our clients, even those who have been a client for many years. If we’re not able to collect and verify the required information, unfortunately we won’t be able to act for you.

By implementing these measures we help to enhance New Zealand's reputation as a safe place to do business and deter criminals from attempting to use our services to finance illegal activity.