Organised and Serious Crime Ordinance

As you may be aware, the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance ("OSCO") was enacted on 12 October 1994.

Section 25 of the OSCO extends the money laundering offence to cover the proceeds of all indictable offences in addition to drug trafficking. This section was brought into operation on 2 December 1994. A copy of Section 25 and the related Section 26 of the OSCO is enclosed at Annex I for your reference.

The effect of these provisions is that any persons, including authorised institutions, should no longer restrict themselves to reporting only suspicious transactions related to drug trafficking. They should report all transactions suspected to be related to "indictable offences" in general.

As regards the recognition of suspicious transactions which my trigger a report to the law enforcement agencies, I would refer to you to paragraphs 39 and 40 of our Guideline on Money Laundering. Similar to the arrangement for disclosure of information under the Drug Trafficking (Recovery of Proceeds) Ordinance (Cap 405)("DTRoP"), any transaction which is suspected to be related to an indictable offence should be reported to the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit operated by the Police and Customs and Excise Departments, using the same standard format attached at Annex 2.

Further amendments are being proposed to the money laundering provisions in both DTRoP and the OSCO. These have been circulated by the Security Branch to among others, the Hong Kong Association of Banks and the Deposit-taking Companies Association for consultation. They are expected to be submitted to the Legislative Council in April 1995.

We intend to revise our Guideline on Money Laundering to reflect these legislative changes in due course. In the meantime, this letter is intended to supplement the existing Guideline. You should take the necessary steps to ensure that your staff are made aware of the broadened reporting requirement in relation to money laundering under the OSCO.

Annex 1(PDF, 94.6KB)

Annex 2(PDF, 689KB)

Updated on Jan 1995