On 1st January 2001 the new Professional Due Diligence for Financial Transactions Act came into force in the Principality of Liechtenstein and was amended in 2005.

The act is designed to combat money laundering and organised crime. The statutorily-anchored bank secrecy or professional secrecy for trustees has not changed in any way.

All financial intermediaries ? in particular trustees, banks and asset managers? are inter alia obliged when entering into a business relationship:

• to identify the contracting party,
• to determine the economic beneficiary of the introduced assets,
• to draw up a profile of the business relationship, i.e. to clarify and document the economic background and the origin of the assets as well as their use and to monitor the correspondence of the performed transactions with this profile on an ongoing basis.

The financial intermediary is essentially obliged to make a copy of the ID document of the contracting party or of the economic beneficiary (passport, ID card, driving license), and must keep this in a separate secure location together with the aforementioned due diligence documentation.

Under certain circumstances the performance of these duties can be delegated by the financial intermediary to qualified third persons (e.g. banks, lawyers).