The Ministry of Justice has allocated 13 working days from 13 to 31 October 2017 for its consultation on the first tranche of draft regulations under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009.

The ministry has released a Consultation Paper on Draft Regulations (Tranche 1) and provided information on how feedback can be given before submissions close at 5pm on Tuesday, 31 October 2017.

Recent amendments to the Act put "Phase 2" of the AML/CFT laws in place. These changes affect businesses already covered by the law ("Phase 1" reporting entities) and extended the AML/CFT regime to cover reporting entities such as lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, real estate agents, and trust and company service providers ("Phase 2" reporting entities).

The proposed "Tranche 1" regulations outline how various AML/CFT measures will work in practice and relate to:

• Prescribing the information that Phase 1 and 2 entities need to provide when they submit a Suspicious Activity Report.
• Prescribing the annual report form for many of the Phase 2 entities.
• Clarifying the scope of an "occasional activity" under the AML/CFT Act.
• Several minor and technical amendments to four existing AML/CFT Regulations.

The ministry has indicated that this is the first of several "tranches" of regulations to be developed in support of Phase 2 of the AML/CFT laws.

It says it anticipates that final decisions on the first tranche of regulations will be made in December 2017, and they will be in force by February 2018.

"Other technical changes and sector-specific regulations will be addressed in 2018," the ministry says.