Can I act as a "document processor "

LOL. The "risk" would be having your bank accounts frozen, losing your practicing licence and spending time at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Count your fingers. If he's in the UK why cannot he receive the documents? Is this the same project that I was told I would be getting a £5 million payment for being the UK accountant ?
I'd let someone more senior than you in your firm be the patsy

What's that noise I can hear? Oh yes alarm bells.

Are you relatively new in practice Andrew?

How exactly did this particular client find you and your practice?

Reason I ask is that some foreign scammers pick on newbies to ask them to do things like this, or a job with an extremely tight deadlines for a rather fat fee that someone just starting out doesnt want to turn down.

Have you carried out the required identify verification on your client?

"He is going to finance the construction of a shopping mall in the Democratic Republic of Congo................................. in the unlikely event of there being any issues with this project.............."

ROFL

Run, keep running and don't look back.

andrewMo wrote:

I have a question on work that I have been asked to carry out on behalf of a client

He is going to finance the construction of a shopping mall in the Democratic Republic of Congo and,

when it is finished, he will get term finance from the Standard Bank to cover the debt

Because he is based in the UK, in the unlikely event of there being any issues with this project, he is looking

For me to act as a “document process agent” to receive any documents  so that this can be dealt with in the UK, under UK law

He says that this is quite normal with these type of projects. Does anyone have any comments..

No, it isn't quite normal.
You say '.... on behalf of a client'. Is this an existing client or a new approach? Either way you are being set up to be a party to a fraud.
The very fact that you have posted this question suggest a level of naivety which the 'client' has picked up on.

If you advise him you're happy to receive and forward on his post so long as you're not dealing with any money, get the terms of your engagement in writing and signed off, fee him in advance for double what you think is fair for this service and get him to pay it, then I say why not?

However, you will not be able to do any of the above because this sounds dodgier than the Artful Dodger dodging a dodgem.

Tell your client to appoint a process agent or a solicitor rather than an accountant. They need someone who specialises in this area rather than appointing an accountant. Aside from the very important issues people have raised - you need to think about how you would do your money laundering checks. How is he financing it before the Standard Bank pay up, would you be able to follow the money trail? Alarm bells should be ringing if your client is UK based but doesn't want any documents going to them. I would hold my hands up, back away and tell them that they need to appoint an accountant that specialises in building shopping malls in the Congo before you get in too deep. I can let you have the details of an accountant I know of but he's tied up for a couple of years (something to do with HMP rather than HMRC) if they can wait that long.