The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017

Provision of information and warrants: safeguards

72.—(1) A person may not be required under regulation 66, 69 or 70 to produce excluded material, or to provide information, produce documents or answer questions which that person would be entitled to refuse to provide, produce or answer on grounds of legal professional privilege in proceedings in the High Court, except that a lawyer may be required to provide the full name and address of the lawyer’s client.

(2) The provision of information in accordance with regulation 66, 69 or 70, is not to be taken to breach any restriction, however imposed, on the disclosure of information.

(3) Where a disclosure is made in good faith in accordance with regulations 66, 69 or 70 no civil liability arises in respect of the disclosure on the part of the person making the disclosure.

(4) A warrant issued under regulation 70 does not confer the right to seize privileged material or excluded material.

(5) Privileged material is any material which the person would be entitled to refuse to produce on grounds of legal professional privilege in proceedings in the High Court.

(6) In the application of this regulation to Scotland, the references in paragraphs (1) and (5)—

(a) to proceedings in the High Court are to be read as references to proceedings in the Court of Session; and

(b) to an entitlement on grounds of legal professional privilege are to be read as references to an entitlement on the grounds of confidentiality of communication—

(i) between professional legal advisers and their clients; or

(ii) made in connection with or in contemplation of legal proceedings and for the purposes of those proceedings.

(7) For the purposes of this regulation, “excluded material” means personal records which a person has acquired or created in the course of any trade, business, profession or other occupation or for the purposes of any paid or unpaid office and which is held subject—

(a) to an express or implied undertaking to hold it in confidence; or

(b) to a restriction on disclosure or an obligation of secrecy contained in any enactment, including an enactment contained in, or made under, an Act passed after this Regulation.