Member

The current drafting of the Bill leaves the door open to that possibility. Upon receiving or acting on information obtained through an EVN, financial institutions may conclude or feel that they are legally obliged to conclude that they are now in possession of “knowledge or suspicion” of criminal property, as they could under POCA. We need to be clear that the presence of an eligibility verification notice is not in itself evidence of guilt, nor a finding of fraud; it is a tool of inquiry only, not a conclusion of wrongdoing. I believe that this amendment provides the necessary clarification. It makes clear that the mere existence of such a notice should not in itself be taken as sufficient grounds to meet the first condition under POCA and, in doing so, it reinforces a crucial legal and moral distinction between suspicion sufficient to warrant investigation and suspicion sufficient to impose real-world sanctions on an individual.