Top 50 U.K. firm Withers has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for failing to adequately provide anti-money laundering training to relevant employees.

According to the SRA, the firm "failed to take appropriate measures to ensure that its relevant employees were regularly given training in how to recognize and deal with transactions and other activities or situations which may be related to money laundering or terrorist financing."

The regulator also ordered the firm to pay about $1,650 to cover the costs of its investigation.

According to the SRA decision notice, the firm had taken too long to provide the necessary anti-money laundering training to all relevant employees between June 2017 and October 2019.

When asked by the SRA in November 2018 whether the training was complete, Withers said that its training program was being reviewed and applicable training would be completed.

By the end of 2018, the firm had provided training to approximately two-thirds of the individuals it considers are "relevant employees". The training of the remaining one-third was completed by early October 2019.

The SRA's notice says that Withers admitted that its failure to train all relevant employees within that time frame "amounted to non-compliance with its legal obligations".

The SRA added that a public rebuke was necessary to provide a deterrent to others, but that "there has been no evidence of lasting harm to consumers or third parties, the breach has been remedied and there is a low risk of repetition".

A spokesperson for Withers said in a statement: "In a lengthy dialogue with the SRA, we have accepted that our training program on the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 was not completed by all of our relevant employees in a timely fashion and we thereby failed to comply with our legal obligations under the Regulations. All relevant training has since been completed, alongside a review of our money laundering training program.

"We welcome the SRA's acknowledgement that this breach did not result in any lasting harm to consumers or third parties and that, notwithstanding our delay in training some of our relevant people, we carried out an internal awareness raising program concerning the anti-money laundering legislation.

"We take our obligations concerning anti-money laundering (AML) duties very seriously, and are confident that we have all appropriate measures in place to monitor and recognize any risk factors in relation to money laundering."

In October, the SRA warned that it was going to crack down on money-laundering non-compliance after it found that a fifth of firms were not adhering to its regulations.