Search Results for: Research

With low labour costs and stable local demand, Ukraine has long been one of the favoured bases for major tobacco companies. However, even without taking into account before the disruption caused by the Covid-19 crisis, the market has been in flux in recent months as the new Ukrainian government has made efforts to change tobacco taxation while ramping up its fight against tobacco smuggling.…

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.…

THE PHILIPPINES government hopes to jumpstart its tropical indigenous textile sector through more innovation, but the country’s exporters say significant work needs to be done to score export orders. The Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Textile Research Institute (DOST-PTRI) last November (2019) inaugurated a Regional Yarn Production and Innovation Center (RYPIC) in Miagao, Iloilo, Panay island, which now produces crafted yarns from blends of natural local textile fibres – culled from abacá, banana and pineapple leaf – combined with cotton.…

Innovative textile materials are proving to be a game changer in the auto industry’s drive towards sustainability, electric transmission and autonomy. Experts have noted how the amount of textiles used in the automotive sector have been growing and will continue to do so: up from 20kg in a mid-size car on average in the year 2000 to 26kg in 2020, said the chair of a ‘Textile Opportunities in a Changing Automotive Industry’ conference, held in Birmingham, England, at the Jaguar Experience centre.…

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.…

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.…

SLOWLY, but steadily, the world’s energy policies are turning green, towards promoting a sustainable future, targeting an increasingly universal goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. With evidence mounting not only that climate change is accelerating, but potentially wreaking serious damage on the world’s economies and peoples, the Paris Agreement goal of holding the rise in global temperatures to well below 2C trying to limit it to 1.5C is being reflected in the plans of governments, regional and international organisations.…