MLR1PP6200 - Penalties guidance: the correct legal entity

Warning letters and penalty notices should be sent to the proper person for the legal entity, and where there is a different Nominated Officer it should also be copied to them.

The proper person is, for:

- a sole proprietor	the Sole Proprietor
- a partnership or LLP	each of the partners in the partnership
- a Limited Company or PLC	the name of the company
- an unincorporated body	a Trustee or authorised person

We should address warning letters and penalty notices to the legal entity itself, as named in their MLR registration.

As a general principle, any penalty action, including warning letters, must be taken against the person who is accountable within a business. (Also referred to as the accountable person)

Ultimately the person liable to the penalty is the ‘relevant person’, which is the person named in regulations 8 of the MLR 2017, who the regulations apply to. So this is who the notice should be addressed to.

To clarify, as an example, if the ‘relevant person’ is a company called J Jones Ltd,

we should address the letters to:

J Jones Ltd

When issuing warning letters and penalty notices a copy should be sent to any Accountant who is acting for the business, providing that we have authority of the business to deal with them directly for AML matters.