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The suspension for alleged corruption by senior officials at a financial intelligence unit (FIU), the cornerstone of any jurisdiction’s AML work, would be shocking. But if those suspensions were at the FIU of the world’s only purely theocratic state, such reports would sound like the work of thriller fiction.…

CYBER-security specialists are warning that AML/CFT officers, law enforcers and IT security managers must prepare now for emerging threats posed by quantum computers, which are already available on the cloud and whose power will grow exponentially in the coming decade. Quantum computing could deliver water-tight solutions for financial institutions seeking dirty and terror money flows, but it could also create hacking tools that could break the toughest IT and cyber-security systems.…

Derisking through the dismantling of correspondent banking relationships continues to be a problem, according to the latest data, prompting concerns that informal transaction networks may grow, whose AML checks may be less robust than those applied by traditional banks.

The European Union (EU) is concerned, with the European Banking Authority (EBA) in October 2019 issued a report on risks affecting the financial sector, with derisking one of its biggest concerns regarding money laundering.…

The world’s fast-growing digital banking and payments sector requires regulatory compliance software that is as scalable as the fast-growing number of users. Some digital banks are developing systems inhouse, which has certain risks, while others have outsourced regulatory solutions.

These financial institutions – which had 2.4 billion users in 2020 according to UK-based Juniper Research – are also known as neo- or challenger banks, and are characterised by being totally digital, operating through a website and smartphone app and having no physical branches, such as the UK-based Monzo and Revolut.…

GIVEN the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by banks on fighting money laundering, fears that trade-based money laundering (TBML) remains widespread, as stressed by FATF, the APG (http://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/methodsandtrends/documents/trade-basedmoneylaunderingtypologies.html), and most recently, the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/supranational_risk_assessment_of_the_money_laundering_and_terrorist_financing_risks_affecting_the_union_-_annex.pdf), are of serous concern. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) said that in 2018, global merchandise exports were worth USD19.48 trillion, so there is plenty of place for laundered money to hide.…

• 1MDB SCANDAL IN MALAYSIA SEES USD BILLIONS STOLEN AND HIDDEN

Malaysia 1MDB scandal is one of the largest money laundering cases ever, worldwide, with Malaysian courts considering charges over how at least USD4.5 billion was stolen and then spent or laundered from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad by former Prime Minister Najib Razak and his associates.…

The large-scale civil protests that erupted across Lebanon in October 2019, and which continue today, have promoted large scale money laundering thought concerted and often successful attempts to avoid capital controls imposed by Lebanese banks to head off failure. Billions of dollars have flown out of the country, the Banque du Liban, the central bank, has warned, while Lebanese consumers have frantically withdrawn deposits as the Lebanese Pound LBP)  has devalued against the US dollar – in October it was officially pegged to the US dollar at LBP1,507 and began to trade above that rate after the protests began, reaching LBP2,700 to the USD in March 2020.…

ANTI-money laundering maybe a career that financial and legal professionals increasingly follow, but the training and qualification structure for AML/CFT is still emerging and solidifying, and there are doubts whether it will ever coalesce into a formal global structure, akin to FATF recommendations.…

South Africa’s electronic vaping product (EVP) market is growing fast – at 5% a year, according to management consultant Canback Consulting, and already estimated to be worth South African Rand ZAR1.16 billion (EUR82.8 million/USD68.2 billion). To target such growth, Philip Morris South Africa (PMSA) opened its first standalone IQOS store last August (2019), selling its smoke-free devices and associated product in the upmarket Johannesburg neighbourhood of Sandton, adding to the 11 kiosks in malls it was already operating in the provinces of Gauteng, Western Cape and Kwazulu-Natal.…

‘Explainability’ is becoming the watchword for AML solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), with developers increasingly aware they must convince regulators their systems’ decisions are reliable and unbiased. The result has been manufacturer clams about the traceability of system decisions, according to a white paper produced in July last year by London, UK-based fin-tech industry network FinTech FinCrime Exchange and the London-based screening and compliance solution company Regulatory DataCorp Inc (RDC) – see https://rdc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AI-and-FinTech-FFE-RDC-Report.pdf.…