SARs – a balanced approach

Pekka Dare is Vice President, International Compliance Association (ICA, www.int-comp.org).

There has been a flurry of recent media coverage of banks freezing customers’ accounts and refusing to explain why, writes Pekka Dare of the International Compliance Association. Allegedly, it is due to overly sensitive AML systems. Firms, it seems, are in real fear of failing to report money laundering (and, in the UK, the Defence Against Money Laundering regime – DAML) and the offence of tipping off.