Far East

First, writes Sue Grossey, I must apologise for my absence from the pages of MLB for the past two issues: I was writing my second book for MLROs and did not feel that I could do justice to my regular articles for you alongside such a large writing project. However, I have still been reading and researching as avidly as ever, and as I’ve been tracking money laundering developments over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed a preponderance of stories featuring Asian countries. So this article is a brief Cook’s Tour of the Asia-Pacific region from a money laundering perspective.

More breath from the Chinese dragon

Following on from Nick Kochan’s excellent article ( MLB September 2005 ), more information has been revealed about China’s anti-money laundering regime and plans. In April, China’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), the Anti-Money Laundering Supervisory and Analysis Centre (AMLSAC) of the People’s Bank of China (PBC – the Chinese central bank) released statistics showing that it had forwarded 683 suspicious transaction reports to the police in 2005; as a result, 600 financial institutions were fined a total of 56.3 million yuan [about UK£3.8 million] for money laundering violations. This is a sharp increase on the 2004 figures, when 66 financial institutions paid fines totalling 1.7 million yuan [about UK£115,000]. AMLSAC said that it had reviewed suspicious transactions worth about 6 billion yuan in 2005; its report detailed a fine of 1.2 million yuan [about UK£81,000] levied on a branch of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in Shenzhen, but did not give the names of any of the other financial institutions required to pay fines.