The Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS) has imposed penalties amounting to S$3.8 million in complete on Citibank, DBS Financial institution, OCBC, and Swiss Life for breaching its Anti-Cash Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) necessities.
MAS found these breaches when it examined these monetary establishments following information of irregularities regarding Wirecard AG’s monetary statements and the alleged involvement of Singapore-based people and entities within the matter.
These 4 monetary establishments had been discovered to have insufficient AML/CFT controls in place after they handled individuals who had been concerned in transactions with, or had hyperlinks to, Wirecard AG or its associated events.
MAS stated that despite the fact that the breaches had been severe, it didn’t discover willful misconduct by any workers of those monetary establishments. That they had taken immediate remedial actions to handle the deficiencies recognized by MAS.
These embody enhancements to their procedures and processes, and coaching to enhance workers’s vigilance in detecting and escalating danger considerations.
MAS had issued fines of S$400,000 on Citibank, S$2.6 million on DBS, S$600,000 on OCBC, and S$200,000 on Swiss Life. In line with the regulator, all 4 of them have accepted the penalties.
Ho Hern Shin
Ho Hern Shin, Deputy Managing Director (Monetary Supervision), MAS, stated,
“As Singapore grows in significance as a world monetary centre, MAS expects our monetary establishments to step up their controls towards facilitating illicit monetary flows.
They have to implement strong measures to know their prospects, monitor on-going transactions to make sure that these are in keeping with their understanding of their prospects and their companies, and train higher vigilance when prospects use complicated constructions.”
