Money Laundering Bulletin

Digital challenger Starling Bank must pay a UK£28,959,426 (US$38,448,705) penalty after it failed to comply with the terms of a voluntary requirement (VREQ) agreed with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) not to take on high and higher ML risk customers until it had fixed its AML model, and for sanctions screening deficiencies.

The generals may be losing their grip on power in Myanmar but widespread concern over the authorities' ability to surveil opponents via the banking system has contributed to a growth in alternative remittance, all against a backdrop of strictures on international payments that accompany blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force. Poppy James& Keith Nuthall look into how the money keeps moving.

In response to anxiety among UK businesses regulated for anti-money laundering that sharing information on customers to prevent economic crime could breach data protection rules, the UK government legislated - in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, effective 15 January 2024 - to disapply civil liability in such circumstances, and has now followed up with practical guidance.

Taiwan's sovereignty as the Republic of China may remain unrecognised by all but 12 countries, but it is a full member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) and has been making significant progress on anti-money laundering/counter financing of terrorism, finds Keith Nuthall.

The latest Financial Action Task Force (FATF) mutual evaluation of Kuwait, published 8 October, finds the Gulf state has "basic" understanding of money laundering risk, at national level, and "low" appreciation of terrorist financing risk.

Small but fiercely independent, Andorra, San Marino and Monaco are working on how closely they might align their anti-money laundering regimes with the European Union model, with marked differences in the progress, as Andreia Nogueira, Brenda Dionisi and Keith Nuthalldiscover.

The European Union (EU) has widened activities that can spark EU sanctions to include so-called 'hybrid' threats, such as undermining electoral systems and hacking, which, it says, are employed by the Russian state and associated Russians.

TD Bank, the tenth largest lender by assets in the USA, pleaded guilty, on 10 October, to conspiring to fail to maintain an anti-money laundering program that complied with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA); to not file accurate currency transaction reports (CTRs); and, a first for a US bank, to launder money. Ultimately owned by Canada's Toronto Dominion Group, the US financial institution will pay just over US$3.1 billion in criminal and civil penalties to US authorities.

"America's Most Convenient Bank" - TD Bank, NA's slogan - it most certainly was, for criminals, for almost a decade, from January 2014 to October 2023. Senior executives, including the Chief Anti-Money Laundering Officer and Bank Secrecy Act Officer, "knew there were long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies" in the bank's AML policies, procedures and controls, but let them pass, in pursuit of a "flat cost paradigm" of profit maximization. Neither is named in the US Department of Justice Information, released on 10 October, but will they be charged?

Not before time Australia appears on the verge of passing legislation that would bring lawyers, accountants, trust and company service providers, real estate agents and others, including in the cryptocurrency sector, within scope of the anti-money laundering regime. Keith Nuthalllooks at the proposed measures and road to implementation.