NY State Bar: Don’t Help Foreign Clients Dodge Currency Controls

NY State Bar: Don’t Help Foreign Clients Dodge Currency Controls

9.6.2019

By Melissa Heelan Stanzione

Bloomberg Law mentions NYSBA Ethics Opinion 1171 on currency control laws. (may require subscription)

Attorneys can’t help their foreign clients make “sham investments” to avoid the foreign country’s currency control laws, the New York State Bar Association’s ethics committee recently advised.

A New York attorney working with clients looking to invest funds from China in the U.S. had asked the committee whether it was acceptable to use the attorney’s escrow account to avoid direct payment from the investing client to a U.S. company.