All AML articles – Page 5
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Blog
Weekends are for ... fraud?
The recent $101M heist from the Central Bank of Bangladesh would have been impossible had it not occurred over a weekend, and had weekends themselves not been observed on different days of the week in Bangladesh than they are in the United States. One thing’s for sure: Whenever the weekend ...
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Article
Putting FINRA’s priorities into practice
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s full court press on addressing emerging and existing risks in the securities industry will continue to intensify in 2016, reinforced by a steady surge in restitution, disciplinary actions, and bars and suspensions over the last five years. What are FINRA’s top regulatory and examination priorities, ...
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Blog
FinCEN withdraws three findings and proposed rulemakings under PATRIOT Act
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network this week said it is withdrawing three findings and related proposed rulemakings under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, after having determined that the subjects of the rulemakings no longer pose a money laundering threat to the U.S. financial system.
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Blog
Egmont Group Explores How to Combat Terrorist Financing
The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units issued its latest Communiqué resulting from its meeting in Monaco last week. Its focus: terrorist financing. The heads (or their designated representatives) of 102 FIUs convened a meeting of its governing body to discuss how the Egmont Group could positively respond to this ...
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Data collection could be key to battling trade-based money laundering
Trade-based money laundering is a common technique for funding terrorist activities through seemingly innocuous trade activity that essentially hides criminal transactions in plain sight. And it will take the combined efforts of U.S. Customs, FinCEN, the Department of Commerce, and port authorities (and their counterparts in other countries) to compile ...
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Blog
The Swiss Tackle International Corruption
Last week the Swiss government announced that it had found improprieties in the conduct of the Malaysian government’s sovereign wealth fund, 1Malyasia Development Berhad. The problem for the government of Malaysia is that the sovereign wealth fund is headed by the country’s Prime Minister, who had over $700 million deposited ...
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Blog
Treasury Moves to Shine a Light on Real Estate Transactions
Recently, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would begin demanding to know the names of folks behind the shell companies, which ultra-wealthy foreigners use to hide behind multimillion-dollar real estate purchases. Efforts by the U.S. Treasury Department to police more closely large cash purchases of real estate as a method ...
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Blog
FinCEN Takes Aim at Real Estate Industry
Compliance officers, beware: the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s increasingly aggressive push to combat money laundering has entered a new phase, and this time it has its sights on high-end real estate transactions. “We are seeking to understand the risk that corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium ...
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Blog
2015 Interactive Timeline: A Year of Transparency
Whether it was the Swiss leaks scandal, the European Parliament’s formal adoption of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, or a movement to require multinational corporations to publicly report financial information on a country-by-country basis, 2015 was a year in which transparency became a watchword across Europe. Take a look at ...
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Article
Why Is Treasury Cracking Down on Big, Cash-Only Real Estate Transactions?
The real estate sector has remained an Achilles’ heel in anti-money laundering efforts by U.S. officials. Concerns that all-cash purchases of residential properties may be used to hide and launder illicit assets has prompted the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to demand that title insurance companies report the beneficial owners behind ...
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Blog
Poll: Lack of Quality Data Poses Due Diligence Challenges
Regulators are increasingly demanding greater evidence of well-developed anti-money laundering compliance programs, processes, and systems and controls, and yet global companies are struggling to keep pace with it all. According to a new webinar poll conducted by Arachnys and Charter, 50 percent of compliance teams said the greatest challenge posed ...
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Article
U.S. and U.K. Treasury Revisit AML Risks
Image: For the first time in 10 years in the United States—and for the first time ever in the United Kingdom—financial institutions have some much-needed insight into how these two countries intend to prioritize money laundering and terrorist financing risks, enabling compliance officers to better allocate their limited resources. “These ...
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Article
Transparency Gaps in the Telecom Sector
Many telecom companies perform reasonably well when disclosing their anti-corruption practices, but less so concerning their organizational structures and country-by-country operations. With the potential for corruption fueled by relaxed rules and regulations, large licensing fees, major equipment contracts, the sale of state operators, and increased M&A activity, telecom companies need ...
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Article
AML Regulations in NY Force CCOs to Rethink Everything
Earlier this month New York officials proposed new anti-money laundering regulations for financial institutions that fall under that state’s regulatory regime and supervision—which pretty much includes every major international bank in the world. Along with heightened demands for monitoring programs that detect money laundering red flags, the requirements seek to ...
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Blog
NY’s New AML Rules Seek Enhanced Monitoring, Attestations
Image: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed a slate of new anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism regulations for financial institutions that fall under that state’s supervision. They include a requirement that senior financial executives certify their institutions have sufficient systems in place to detect, weed out, and prevent illicit transactions, ...
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Blog
Barclays: A Modern Enforcement Action for Modern Misconduct
Image: Last week the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority whacked Barclays with a fine of £72 million ($109 million) for sloppy oversight of a huge private-client deal brimming with financial crime risk. The more you read the details of the transaction and how poorly bank executives managed it, the more you ...
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Blog
AML and CFT Risks: No Easy Solutions
Image: By sad coincidence, Compliance Week held its first-ever conference in Dubai earlier this week, and the conversation inevitably turned to sanctions, money-laundering, and terrorism funding—just days after 130 people were killed in the Paris attacks. Compliance officers must pay attention to those issues like never before, editor Matt Kelly ...
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Blog
Fed to Bank of Nova Scotia: Fix AML Controls
The U.S. Federal Reserve and the New York Department of Financial Services in an enforcement action this week ordered the Bank of Nova Scotia and its New York agency to significantly improve its anti-money laundering operations. The bank and the branch have 60 days to jointly submit a written enhanced ...
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Article
Investment Advisers Next to Feel AML Scrutiny
Investment advisers have never had to face formal anti-money laundering requirements. That is about to change. A proposed rule by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network adds them to the definition of “financial institutions” and demands comprehensive anti-money laundering programs. That has raised concerns of cost and redundancy and ...
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Blog
Oh Craps: Caesar’s Palace Fined $8M for Lax AML Controls
Caesar’s Palace will pay an $8 million penalty for poor money laundering controls that apparently let wealthy clienete gamble millions of dollars in a single visit, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The AML compliance holes let the high-rollers use front money instead of their own, thwarting recordkeeping and ...