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Ifina SICAV fined €60,141 in Malta for ML/TF risk assessment failings
A collective investment scheme has been ordered to pay a €60,141 penalty after the Maltese Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) uncovered shortcomings in its business and customer money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessments during a compliance review in 2021.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Trustee services firm fined €41,136 in Malta over ML/TF risk assessment faults
An unnamed trustee services company has been ordered to pay €41,136 after the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) in Malta found deficiencies in its business and customer ML/TF risk assessments via an offsite compliance review in 2020.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
MT SecureTrade pays €53,179 in Malta for CDD and monitoring breaches
Online gaming operator MT SecureTrade Ltd has been fined €53,179 in Malta after anti-money laundering control breaches were found in the course of a regulatory inspection in 2020.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Scale at speed - quantum progress
The ability to go beyond the binary constraints of classical computing into a realm of qubits, which may simultaneously be in both one and zero states, opens the way to crunching data and pattern discovery - think transaction monitoring and connecting entities - at levels hitherto undreamt of. Advances are rapid but there's still practical, if not theoretical, ground to cover, Keith Nuthall finds.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Remote but safe - cyber defence post-Covid 19
The online threat vectors may have multiplied but the pandemic also drove firms to tighten perimeter security and their IT control environment more broadly. Paul Cochrane looks at the constant monitoring to ensure compliance integrity under a hybrid working format.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Level up - large language models raise the stakes
ChatGPT and similar next generation AI have brought us closer to the point of indistinguishability between communication by human or machine. If the software per se is neutral, the data it is fed may not be, nor yet its application. Keith Nuthall explores the positives and dangers for AML in the latest IT step-change.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
On course - Antigua & Barbuda
Resolve by Antigua & Barbuda to tighten controls on illicit finance is clear from the findings of successive follow-up reports on its Caribbean Financial Action Task Force evaluation in 2017. Legislative and regulatory reforms though are a dead letter if not backed by resource so an expanded financial intelligence unit and government focus on non-profit organisations, encountered by Gemma Handy, in St John's, Antigua & Barbuda, and Keith Nuthall, are positive signs of action on the ground, even as they discover there is much more to do.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
In the grey zone: DeFi & NFTs
If designing regulation to keep up with innovation in digital finance is like catching mercury, seeking to future-proof it is juggling quicksilver - impossible? Perhaps, yet there is every reason to try, Keith Nuthall finds.
Online Published Date:
21 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Singapore strikes ex-pat SG$1 billion money laundering ring
A group of 10 foreign nationals, all ethnically Chinese, have appeared at Singapore's State Courts accused of operating a SG$1 billion (US$738 million) international money laundering ring. The ten have all been denied bail in preliminary hearings, following an island-wide set of police raids on 15 August [2023] involving more than 400 officers. The Singapore Police Force has said it is hunting for eight more suspects and 12 others are assisting with the inquiry.
Online Published Date:
30 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Swiss regulator flags serious flaws in bank ML risk assessments
The Swiss financial services supervisor reviewed over 30 banks' money laundering risk assessments in spring this year and found that many "did not meet... basic requirements".
Online Published Date:
30 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Impactful - hybrid centralized-decentralized AML compliance
Corporate anti-money laundering (AML) compliance objectives are a balancing act of effective AML risk management, revenue goals, and cost savings, says Kieran Holland of FinScan. Risk management needs to ensure compliance with local and global regulations and minimize financial crime risk, while procurement and operations want to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Revenue generation requires a competitive advantage and depends on front office efficiency (speed of doing business, account opening) and customer satisfaction. The reality is that many organizations struggle to achieve this balancing act with their AML programs.
Online Published Date:
30 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Whose fault?
Read through any AML enforcement notice against a financial institution, or indeed a designated non-financial business or profession (DNFBP), since inception of regulation in the area and the same basic failures recur - whether in customer due diligence (CDD); record-keeping; monitoring; reporting; training; resourcing; or management oversight, in the sense of turning a blind eye to regulatory obligations until the authorities insist on speaking to someone at the top.
Online Published Date:
30 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Switzerland to set up beneficial ownership register & bring lawyers into AML scope
The Swiss Federal Council proposed, on 30 August, to strengthen the country's anti-money laundering regime through creation of a register of beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities, and to extend due diligence and reporting obligations to legal professionals in certain circumstances.
Online Published Date:
31 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Wise Payments in breach of UK Russia sanctions - disclosure, no fine
A UK£250 cash withdrawal from a Wise Payments Ltd business account on a debit card in the name of a designated person under UK's The Russia (Sanctions) EU Exit Regulations 2019 has resulted in the first exercise of its Disclosure power by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementations (OFSI).
Online Published Date:
31 August 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
Delist drive - South Africa
Unimpressed by the slow rate of improvement in South Africa's anti-money laundering regime following its mutual evaluation in 2021, the Financial Action Task Force sought to force the pace in February this year, putting the country under 'increased monitoring', so on the 'grey list'. Paul Cochrane, in Pietermaritzburg, looks at the response across the months since.
Online Published Date:
06 September 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023
UK sanctions compliance - more honoured in the breach?
It's rarely - correction, to date, never - a cause for celebration when the UK financial services regulator publishes findings on how well those it supervises are complying with the rules. True to form, on 6 September we learnt that "some firms' systems were unable to generate alerts against certain names on OFSI's [Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation] consolidated list of persons subject to sanctions, and some firms were unable to provide reasonable justification for the omissions".
Online Published Date:
06 September 2023
Appeared in issue:
307 - 02 October 2023