## Section 3 Recent legal amendments

Necessary amendments to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds and its subsidiary laws have been made as appropriate to respond to social changes and amendments of other laws in view of the prevention of money laundering and related crimes. In 2011, the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds was amended for the first time since its enactment in 2007, and its subsidiary laws were also amended as necessary.

## 1 Amendment of the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds

## (1) Background of amendment

The government has repeatedly considered improvement in the areas pointed out by the Third FATF Mutual Evaluation of Japan (refer to Section 2-3 of Chapter 5) conducted on Japan between 2007 and 2008. As for the recommendation regarding customer due diligence, various discussions were made in the meeting of business operators on customer due diligence for measures against money laundering, which was participated by experts and businesspeople and was established in the National Police Agency in January 2010. The results of the discussions were subsequently reported in July of the same year.

Meanwhile, a close look at the damage of Furikome Fraud that remains at a high level suggests the frequent use of call forwarding service providers (described later) in the crimes and ongoing issues of illicit transfers of savings passbooks as tools for such crimes.

Taking into account the abovementioned report and recent trends in the damage of Furikome Fraud and other crimes in the country, a bill on amendments to the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds was submitted to the 177th session of the Diet in April 2011, and a law for the amendment of the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds was enacted on the 27th of the same month, which was promulgated on the following 28th.

## (2) Overview of amendment

(A) Addition of matters to be confirmed in the transactions of specified business operators (This will be enforced within two years from the day of the promulgation.)

In addition to identification information, specified business operators excluding professions such as lawyers and judicial scriveners must confirm the following when engaging in certain transactions with their customers:

☐ Purposes of the transaction

Details of the customer's occupation (if the customer is a nature person) or his/her business (if the customer is a legal person)

☐ The beneficial owner (if the customer is a legal person)

Further, a requirement for the confirmation of assets and income was added to the above for certain transactions exposed to a high risk of money laundering such as those suspected of identity fraud.

(B) Addition of call forwarding service providers to specified business operators (This will be enforced within two years from the day of the promulgation.)

Those business operators providing the service of lending their own telephone numbers to customers and automatically forwarding the calls to such numbers to other numbers specified by customers (call forwarding service providers) were added to the group of specified business operators.

(C) Strengthening penalties for illicit transfer of savings passbooks (This was enforced in May 2011)

Prison term (may be combined with a fine) for acts such as illicit transfer of savings passbooks was introduced, and both the fines and maximum terms for such wrongdoing committed as a business were increased.